US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will meet in Singapore on Tuesday for a historic summit with an uncertain outcome after several decades of opposition and tension in US-North Korean relations.
At the center of all talks will be the North Korean nuclear program, for which the UN has imposed a series of sanctions on Pyongyang over the years.
Kim Jong Un has already arrived in Singapore. In recent history, there is no precedent for the gamble that the hitherto isolated Kim Jong Un has embarked on, according to the AP agency.
Trump will be the first sitting US president to speak directly with one of the heirs to the Kim dynasty.
He is expected in Singapore this afternoon CET.
A huge question mark reigns over that bilateral meeting, which the whole world will closely follow on Tuesday, France Press reports.
Washington is seeking complete denuclearization of North Korea, verifiable and irreversible. North Korea has declared for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, but that imprecise wording leaves room for numerous interpretations.
One analyst believes that the only realistic outcome of the meeting is the opening of the process in stages.
Washington hinted as one possible concrete result of the summit an agreement in principle to officially end the Korean War (1950-1953), which was concluded with an armistice, but not a peace treaty, so that North and South Korea are practically still at war.
Before leaving Canada, where he attended the G7 meeting, Trump yesterday again expressed his optimism for this meeting, which he hopes will mark his presidency.
"I have the impression that Kim Jong Un wants to do something important for his people, and he has a chance," Trump said, adding that it is a unique chance that will not happen again. The American president said he was going on a mission of peace.
Trump said that the result will largely depend on his instincts. He said that he will know in the first minute of the meeting with Kim whether the North Korean leader is serious about negotiations on nuclear issues.
In a more reserved style, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has met twice with Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang, also expressed hope for a good outcome of the meeting.
"On an Air Force One plane, on the way to a summit in Singapore. A better future is possible for North Korea," Pompeo wrote in a tweet sent during the flight to Singapore on the presidential plane.
Holding the summit became a possibility one March evening at the White House when a South Korean envoy delivered an invitation to Kim Jong Un which, to everyone's surprise, Donald Trump immediately accepted.
Since Trump shocked allies, White House officials and, according to some reports, the North Koreans themselves when he accepted Kim's invitation to a meeting in March, the two leaders have been aiming for a meeting that could have a favorable outcome for millions of people, according to the AP agency.
Trump, who considers himself an exceptional negotiator, according to many observers, was much less demanding than his predecessors before agreeing to sit down at the negotiating table with Kim Jong Un.
"People are talking about a historic summit ... but it's important to keep in mind that this summit was possible for any American president who wanted to hold it and none of them wanted to, for good reasons," said Christopher Hill, former American negotiator on the matter.
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