HANOI, Vietnam — The Latest on the summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump (all times local):

President Donald Trump is calling the relationship between the U.S. and Vietnam an “example” of what can become of North Korea if it gives up its nuclear weapons.

Trump paid a courtesy call Wednesday to Vietnamese President Nguyen Phu Trong ahead of his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi.

Trump says, “We both felt very good about having this very important summit in Vietnam because you really are an example as to what can happen, with good thinking.”

The Vietnamese leader says his country has “been making all necessary preparations to ensure the best conditions for the success of this very special meeting.”

Trump is thanking Vietnam for hosting the summit and for agreeing to new trade deals with American companies, including Boeing.

U.S. President Donald Trump is meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart hours before he is set to sit down with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

Trump is greeting Vietnamese President Nguyen Phu Trong, whose country is hosting the second summit between the leaders of the two technically-warring nations.

The two leaders are set to sign a commercial trade agreement Wednesday before Trump is to meet with Vietnam’s prime minister.

Trump’s courtesy call to the host nation’s leadership is meant to provide Kim with a visualization of a potential future should he give up his country’s nuclear weapons in a deal with the U.S. After a decade of bloody conflict that ended more than four decades ago, the U.S. and Vietnam are now economic and strategic partners.

President Donald Trump’s eldest son is accusing Democrats of trying to distract his father during his summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.

Donald Trump Jr. told Fox News on Tuesday that he believed the Democrats deliberately scheduled the congressional testimony of Michael Cohen, the president’s former fixer, opposite the summit in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Trump Jr. said that the Democrats were trying to “counterprogram the kind of progress” that could be achieved in the Vietnam gathering and that it was evidence of the “disdain” they hold for the president.

He also argued that it was proof the Democrats were more interested in scoring political points than in national security by attempting to “stymie” the denuclearization talks.

Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for crimes including a campaign finance violation that he says was at the direction of the president.

President Donald Trump says Vietnam, the site of his second round of nuclear talks with Kim Jong Un, is thriving economically and that North Korea could, too, if it would give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Before sitting down with Kim later Wednesday in Hanoi, Trump tweeted that “North Korea would be the same, and very quickly, if it would denuclearize. The potential is AWESOME, a great opportunity, like almost none other in history, for my friend Kim Jong Un.”

In a second tweet, Trump took a shot at Democrats in Washington, saying they should stop telling him what to do with North Korea and “ask themselves instead why they didn’t do ‘it’ during eight years of the Obama Administration?” </s> U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un failed to reach an agreement on denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula at their summit in Vietnam on Thursday, the White House said.

Trump said his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam failed to reach agreement due to North Korean demands to lift punishing U.S.-led sanctions.

“Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety, but we couldn’t do that….we had to walk away from it,” Trump told reporters after summit talks were cut short in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi.

Earlier, both Trump and Kim had expressed hope for progress on improving relations and on the key issue of denuclearisation, in their talks in Hanoi.

“The two leaders discussed various ways to advance denuclearization and economic driven concepts,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said. “No agreement was reached at this time, but their respective teams look forward to meeting in the future.”

Trump had been scheduled to hold a “joint agreement signing ceremony” with Kim at the conclusion of their summit talks, according to an earlier White House announcement.

Both leaders left the venue of their talks, the French-colonial-era Metropole hotel, at 1.25 p.m. (0625), without attending a planned lunch together, and returned to their hotels.

Trump is now due to hold a news conference at 2 p.m. (7:00 GMT). News of the change in schedule sent South Korea’s currency lower and knocked regional stock markets.

Earlier Kim and Trump, seated across from each other at a conference table, appeared confident of progress.

“If I’m not willing to do that, I won’t be here right now,” Kim told reporters through an interpreter, when asked if he was ready to give up his nuclear weapons.

Trump, responding to that, said: “That might be the best answer you’ve ever heard.”

Kim did not elaborate on what “denuclearisation” would entail, but asked if he was ready to take concrete steps, Kim said they had just been talking about that.

While the United States is demanding North Korea give up all of its nuclear and missile programmes, the North wants to see the removal of a U.S. nuclear umbrella for its Asian allies such as South Korea and Japan.

The two leaders’ summit in Singapore in June, the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader, produced a vague statement in which Kim pledged to work toward denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

But there has been little progress since. </s> The nuclear summit between United States President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un in Hanoi ended abruptly on Thursday as they cut short their discussions and failed to reach an agreement.

The second meeting between the two leaders was supposed to build on their historic first summit in Singapore but they failed to bridge their differences and did not sign a joint statement as initially scheduled.

“Sometimes you have to walk and this was just one of those times,” Trump told reporters.

Trump said that the sanctions imposed on Pyongyang over its nuclear programme had been the sticking point. “Basically they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety and we couldn't do that,” he said.

But he insisted he was “optimistic that the progress we made” before and at the summit left them “in position to have a really good outcome” in the future.

“I'd much rather do it right than do it fast,” he added.

The outcome fell far short of the pre-meeting expectations and hopes, after critics said their initial historic meeting in Singapore was more style over substance. “This is a major failure,” tweeted Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund peace foundation.

It showed the limit of summitry, he added, with “not enough time or staff” to work out a deal.

In the original White House programme, a “Joint Agreement Signing Ceremony” had been scheduled in Hanoi as well as a working lunch for the two leaders.

In the event, both men left the summit venue without signing anything and Trump moved up his news conference by two hours.

Ankit Panda, from the Federation of American Scientists, warned on Twitter that the White House's expectation of further talks “does not have to be a perception shared in North Korea. Kim may have left irate, for all we know. He may have no intention of continuing this.”

Trump flew around the world for the meeting and Kim undertook a mammoth two-and-a-half-day trek through China in his olive green train, travelling 4,000 kilometres (2,500 miles).

At first the smiles and bonhomie from Singapore ran on into their second date in Hanoi as Trump touted the “special relationship” between the two, although concrete statements were vague.

The US president frequently dangled the prospect of a brighter economic future for a nuclear-free North Korea, at one point saying there was “awesome” potential.

From the outset, he had appeared to downplay expectations of an immediate breakthrough in nuclear talks, saying he was in “no rush” to clinch a rapid deal and was content if a pause in missile testing continued.

But Harry Kazianis, Director of Korean Studies at the Centre for the National Interest, said that no agreement was better than a bad one.

There would be “nothing worse than signing a deal just to get something”, he told AFP. “The challenge is North Korea's nuclear weapons are already a reality,” he added. “Getting a deal that does little to nothing to remove that threat would be far worse than a flawed deal.”

In Singapore the two signed a vague document in which Kim pledged to “work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”.

Progress subsequently stalled with the two sides disagreeing on what that means, as the North sought relief from sanctions and Washington pressed for concrete steps towards it giving up its weapons.

As in Singapore, the two men put on a show of bonhomie in Vietnam, appearing to share jokes in front of reporters.

Looking relaxed but appearing to say little, they indulged in a poolside stroll on Thursday around the gardens of the luxury Metropole Hotel, a colonial-era building that has played host to stars ranging from Charlie Chaplin to Brad Pitt.

It echoed a garden walkabout in Singapore, where the two men bonded over Trump's hulking car — the “Beast” — with the US president allowing the younger man a glimpse inside.

It was a far cry from the height of missile-testing tensions in 2017 when Trump slammed Kim as “rocket man” and the younger man branded the American president a “mentally deranged US dotard”.

In apparently unprecedented scenes, Kim answered unscripted questions from foreign reporters, saying that he would welcome the establishment of a US liaison office in Pyongyang, which would be a step on the way to diplomatic normalisation.

Before the summit, there was talk that there could be a political declaration ending the 1950-53 Korean War which finished technically with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.

There were also hopes Kim could pledge to destroy North Korea's decades-old Yongbyon nuclear complex, which has long been at the heart of Pyongyang's atomic development but remains shrouded in secrecy — and North Korea has promised to mothball it twice before.

A patent distraction from the summit was a scandal back home in Washington with Trump's former personal lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen calling him a “racist” and a “conman” during a congressional hearing.

The president already showed he had the testimony at the back of his mind when he tweeted about it before his first meeting with Kim, saying Cohen — who has been sentenced to three years in jail — was “lying in order to reduce his prison time”. </s> President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will meet one-on-one at the start of their summit next week in Hanoi, a senior administration official said on Thursday.

The initial session will be followed by a meal and expanded talks with each country’s delegation.

“President Trump is looking to, after really in some respects breaking the ice in June, to talk in more depth about the kind of future North Korea could enjoy if it follows through on its commitment to final and full denuclearization,” a senior administration official said.

Trump is hoping to advance four priorities in his summit meeting with Kim next week in Hanoi, a senior administration official said on Thursday.

The priorities include: transforming relations between the US and North Korea; establishing a peace regime on the Korean peninsula; the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula; and the return of killed-in-action and missing-in-action Americans from the Korean War.

Senior US officials are in Hanoi now negotiating with a North Korean delegation ahead of the summit.

“Nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to,” one official said. “We will be closely engaged with the North Korean delegation right up until the President arrives for the summit next week.”

A withdrawal of US troops from South Korea is not under consideration ahead of Trump’s summit next week with Kim, a senior administration official says.

The matter “is not the subject of discussions” with the North Koreans, the official said.

A second official said a troop withdrawal “is not really an operative subject right now.” </s> HANOI (DPA) - North Korean and United States officials landed in Hanoi on Saturday (Feb 16) as all three countries prepare for the upcoming summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, state media reported.

The two delegations are expected to organise logistical coordination for the summit, the VnExpress news site reported.

Hanoi police also said they would dispatch 96 patrol groups to crack down on crime in the 10 days preceding the summit. City landmarks will also be put on round-the-clock police surveillance.

Security for the summit is expected to be tight. While the risk of terrorism is considered extremely low in Vietnam, the capital's density makes the city harder for bodyguards on both the North Korean and US teams to secure their bosses.

Mr Trump and Mr Kim previously met in Singapore in June 2018 following a heated exchange of words, with both threatening war between their nuclear armed states.

Even though Mr Trump has portrayed the first meeting as resolving conflict over the North Korean nuclear programme, Pyongyang has done little to denuclearise the peninsula and US intelligence officials say the country is unlikely to totally disarm.

But as the second summit looms, Vietnam, a former wartime foe of the US, has offered to mediate discussions between Pyongyang and Washington, urging both sides to show restraint.

Speaking in Hanoi in July 2018, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he wished for North Korea to replicate Vietnam's economic development and reconciliation with the US. </s> Palm Beach (United States): US president Donald Trump on Wednesday hailed a "great" clandestine meeting between his CIA chief and North Korea's leader, as he signalled that his improbable summit with Kim Jong-un will go ahead.

News of the Easter weekend talks between Mike Pompeo and the reclusive Kim was the latest in a series of revelations from the US leader that have fuelled hopes of a major diplomatic breakthrough with Pyongyang.

Heaping praise on Pompeo — the man he has already tapped to be the next secretary of state — Trump said the 54-year-old's covert mission to the North Korean capital had gone well.

"He just left North Korea. Had a great meeting with Kim Jong Un, and got along with him really well, really great," Trump said. "He's very smart but he gets along with people."

Trump earlier tweeted that the "meeting went very smoothly and a good relationship was formed."

"Details of Summit are being worked out now," added the president, who is hosting Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe for two days of talks at his Florida retreat, which he calls the "Winter White House."

Neither Trump nor the White House offered details of what was discussed and it remains unclear if there is enough potential for an agreement to have the Trump-Kim summit, slated for early June, go ahead.

Officials and outside experts say it is still not clear that Kim, who depends on the military to remain in power, is willing to completely give up his nuclear weapons.

North Korean talk of "denuclearization" — which Trump has seemingly embraced — has in the past been code for removing America's military presence on the Korean peninsula, something long unthinkable in Washington.

"Denuclearization will be a great thing for World, but also for North Korea!" Trump added in the tweet.

Nonetheless, the flurry of diplomatic activity has raised hopes for a pair of upcoming and potentially historic summits.

Kim is expected to meet South Korea's president Moon Jae-in next week for landmark talks at which discussion of a formal peace declaration is now on the cards.

The 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty, leaving the two sides technically at war. The Demilitarised Zone between them bristles with minefields and fortifications.

Seoul's push to formally declare an end to inter-Korean hostilities would have been unthinkable just months ago.

"We are looking at the possibility of replacing the armistice regime on the Korean peninsula with a peace regime," a senior official at South Korea's presidential Blue House said on Wednesday.

"But this is not something we can do by ourselves. It needs close discussions with relevant parties including North Korea."

Trump earlier said that the summit could, with his "blessing," explore a peace treaty to formally end the conflict.

But reaching any final treaty would be fraught with complications.

While the US-led United Nations command, China and North Korea are signatories to the decades-old armistice, South Korea is not.

Both Pyongyang and Seoul claim sovereignty over the whole Korean peninsula, but a treaty could imply mutual recognition of each other.

Next week's meeting will be just the third summit between the North and South since the armistice was signed 65 years ago.

Key moments including Kim and Moon's first handshake will be televised live, both sides agreed at working-level talks on Wednesday, Seoul said.

Trump himself plans to hold a summit meeting with Kim within the next two months.

The pair have not spoken directly, the White House said, but the president revealed on Tuesday there had been contact at "very high levels" to prepare for the historic meeting - an apparent reference to Pompeo's visit.

Trump also said that "five locations" were being considered for the summit.

"That will be taking place probably in early June or before that, assuming things go well. It's possible things won't go well and we won't have the meetings and we'll just continue to go on this very strong path we have taken."

US officials say that no decision has yet been made on a meeting venue, but China, North Korea, South Korea, and Panmunjom in the Demilitarised Zone are seen as possible locations. </s> The President of the United States Donald Trump reportedly plans to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on February 27-28.

The meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un is planned to take place in Vietnam, Politico reported.

Trump is reportedly expected to formally announce details of his second summit with Kim during his State of the Union address to Congress later on Tuesday night.

Earlier, the US State Department said in a press release that US Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun was about to travel to Pyongyang on February 6 for talks to prepare for the second summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un.

The long-standing tensions on the Korean Peninsula started to ease after Kim Jong-un committed to denuclearization of Korean peninsula and held historic summits with US President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. </s> President Donald Trump meets with North Korean official Kim Yong Chol on June 1, 2018.

WASHINGTON — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's wish list for his June 12 meeting with President Trump at a resort in Singapore could shed light on the prospects for the summit.

Trump in the past promised "great things" for North Korea if it dismantles its nuclear program. On Friday, after meeting with the North's Vice Chairman Kim Yong Chol, the president appeared to tamp down expectations for next week's meeting, calling it "a get-to-know-you kind of a situation," and "a process" that starts with building relationships.

Trump said the U.S. and North Korea may agree in Singapore to formally end the Korean War, which has been frozen with an armistice agreement since 1953. He said he no longer wants to speak of "maximum pressure" on North Korea, and said South Korea, Japan and China are expected to provide economic assistance to the North if the summit goes well. He implied that U.S. sanctions could be lifted at a later point, which would allow business relations between the North and the United States for the first time.

But he is likely to hear from Kim that the North seeks more than a deal on nuclear weapons or a peace treaty. Here's what Kim wants:

More: No one leaves early, and 4 other key things for a successful Trump-North Korea summit

More: Donald Trump: June 12 meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong Un back on

More: North Korea's isolation crumbling as Trump abandons 'maximum pressure' campaign

Kim's spokesman said last month that North Korea is not interested in giving up its nuclear program without a corresponding change in the U.S. military posture.

North Korea is not interested in "unilateral nuclear abandonment," Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan said in a statement, according to North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

He accused the White House and State Department of attempting to turn North Korea into another Libya by insisting on "abandoning nuclear weapons first, compensating afterward."

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi relinquished his nuclear weapons development program in return for normalized relations with the United States, but he was deposed in a rebellion supported by NATO.

North Korea's agreements and statements indicate Kim wants normalized relations with the United States. “An end to U.S. enmity remains Kim Jong Un’s aim just as it was his grandfather’s and father’s for the past 30 years,” said Leon Sigal, author of Disarming Strangers: Nuclear Diplomacy with North Korea.

Kim may be willing to denuclearize and even take steps to disarm if Trump commits to end hostile relations with North Korea and takes action to show the United States means it, Sigal wrote in March in 38 North, an independent online journal that provides analysis of North Korea.

A problem for U.S. leaders has been that North Korea's totalitarian government is so cruel to its people and aggressive toward its neighbors that allowing normal trade would be politically unappetizing.

In his New Year's speech, Kim said his poor country was ready to shift to economic development.

Past negotiations also focused on economic benefits. The United States offered to arrange energy assistance from petroleum producers, build two light-water nuclear reactors that would be difficult to use for producing weapons, provide food assistance and lift sanctions.

April's meeting of the rival Korean leaders ended with South Korean President Moon Jae-in's promise to connect and modernize railroad lines and roads.

To keep that pledge, the South would need waivers from United Nations Security Council sanctions on North Korea, something Trump appears ready to agree to provide to the South, China and Japan. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said the United States would not provide any benefits until the North completely dismantled its nuclear program.

More: Donald Trump, North Korea's Kim Jong Un will likely save the details for after the summit

More: Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un: Still fighting the Korean War

More: Kim Jong Un's fires top military leaders: What does it mean?

North Korea has made agreements while still advancing its nuclear program and can be expected to continue doing the same, said Richard Fisher, a Korea and China analyst at the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

While Kim negotiates with Trump, his engineers are probably perfecting a weapon that can strike the U.S. mainland, Fisher said."They tested two ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) capable of reaching the United States," Fisher said. "They have not yet demonstrated that the missile could carry a warhead that would survive re-entry with some level of accuracy. I’m sure they’re working day and night to develop a viable warhead."

Kim's negotiations with Trump and Moon "allowed this megalomaniac leader to seem reasonable on the world stage," and furthers a shared North Korean and Chinese goal to reduce U.S. influence in northeast Asia, Fisher said.

"Prior to these negotiations, Kim Jong Un was seen as a missile-rattling rocket boy threat to the world. (Chinese President Xi Jinping) couldn’t embrace him," Fisher said. "Now that the negotiations have gone as far as they have, Xi can embrace this young leader and solidify their already very close cooperation."

Other leaders have too. Russia has invited Kim to a conference in Vladivostok in September, and KCNA announced Sunday that Syrian President Bashar Assad will be the first head of state to visit Kim in Pyongyang.

Kim and China seek an end to the U.S. military presence in South Korea, Fisher said. "They want the Americans off the Korean Peninsula. They want full range and freedom to intimidate South Korea even more and to isolate Japan," he said. "It's all part of a larger goal of forcing American power back to Hawaii and California." </s> At the Hanoi Summit, Trump Should Hold Himself to His Own Standards

President Donald Trump will have to rely heavily on his personal deal-making skills to get through his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, set for Feb. 27 and 28 in Hanoi. That’s exactly what Kim is hoping for.

The format will be similar to the summit held in Singapore last June, with plenty of one-on-one time for the president and supreme leader. That suits Kim just fine. All indications are that the North Koreans are denying the U.S. negotiators any specific written commitments going into Hanoi because they know that capable U.S. State Department officials will insist on concrete and verifiable measures. Because Trump wants the summit with Kim regardless of the actual status of the negotiations over denuclearization, the State Department negotiators are probably going into the summit knowing only slightly more about the likely outcome than the rest of us.

It is a fair guess, though, that the most probable outcome is some variation on the status quo. The Trump administration has dropped demands for a declaration of North Korean nuclear and missile capabilities that would be the necessary precursor for an actual denuclearization process. Kim might agree to allow inspectors into the satellite and nuclear test facilities the North has already decommissioned or let inspectors back into the facilities in Yongbyon (for the third time), but these steps would be more symbolic than substantive. Somewhat more significant would be the North giving broader access to its newer uranium enrichment facilities in Yongbyon, but even that would add only limited insights to what Washington already knows. In exchange, Pyongyang would demand significant sanctions rollbacks and a formal declaration ending the Korean War. (Trump is clearly attracted to the latter proposition.) In other words, the core agreement would remain unchanged from the one going into the Singapore summit: a freeze-for-freeze in which North Korea refrains from nuclear and missile tests and the United States continues its halt on military exercises with South Korea—which Trump announced unilaterally in Singapore without consulting South Korea, Japan, or his own Defense Department.

Trump and members of his administration continue to trumpet this as a major accomplishment. This week, Trump told reporters, “There’s no testing. As long as there is no testing, I’m in no rush.” But a freeze-for-freeze is exactly what the Trump administration once swore it would not accept. In September 2017, Nikki Haley, then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, called the Sino-Russian freeze-for-freeze proposal “insulting,” and the previous month State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said there was “no equivalency” between U.S. exercises and North Korean testing. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger put it best in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 25, 2018, when he said:

The widely discussed “freeze for freeze” scheme—halting North Korean missile tests in return for abandoning defined Allied military exercises—will not … fulfill this purpose or even advance it. That would equate legitimate security operations with activities which have been condemned by the UN Security Council for decades. And it would encourage demands for additional restraints on, and perhaps the dismantling of, America’s alliances in the region. In its ultimate sense, a freeze would legitimize North Korea’s nuclear establishment as well as the results of its previous tests.

The self-imposed military exercise freeze will almost certainly continue after the Hanoi summit, and that could be compounded by a declaration officially ending the Korean War—which would not mean much. The United States should give diplomacy a chance, but Congress and the media should hold Trump to the standards his administration already set.
The summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi abruptly ends earlier than scheduled, with the White House saying no deal has been reached in regards to relations between the two countries and North Korea's nuclear weapons policies and sanctions due to them.