US President Donald Trump will arrive in Hanoi on Tuesday to a second face-to-face gathering with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and meetings with Vietnamese leaders.
US President Donald Trump. Photo: AP
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At a pressing meeting this morning at the International Media Center, Vietnam’s Deputy Foreign Minister Le Hoai Trung said while this will not be an official visit to Vietnam, Trump will meet Vietnamese leaders to discuss bilateral ties and “important issues.”
He is scheduled to meet with his Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Phu Trong and Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on the next day, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam and President is on a tour to Laos and Cambodia on February 24-26.
President Trump paid an official visit to Hanoi in November 2017 after attending the APEC Summit in the resort city of Danang.
Trump and Kim will have a one-on-one meeting in February 27-28 in an effort to accelerate the denuclearization process on the Korean Peninsula following their ice-breaking summit in Singapore in June last year.
Meanwhile, leader Kim Jong Un departed Pyongyang last weekend for Hanoi, and is expected to arrive in Vietnam in the morning of February 26, according to Yonhap. Security is being tightened at Dong Dong railway station in Lang Son province, which borders with China.
Chairman Kim will have an official visit to Vietnam in the “coming days”, the Vietnamese ministry said on Saturday.
Trump and Kim reached an agreement last year to move forward denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula. However, a lack of palpable progress has been seen.
A senior Trump administration official said on February 21 that his government is looking to move forward with a number of initiatives that could specifically advance each of the four pillars of the Singapore joint statement from last summer. The four pillars are: Transforming relations between the US and North Korea; establishing a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula; complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula; and the return of MIAs and KIAs from the Korean War.
