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> 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 (Reuters) - North Korean special envoy Kim Hyok Chol arrived in Hanoi on Wednesday, a Reuters witness and a source with direct knowledge said, ahead of the second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in Vietnam’s capital.

Trump and Kim are due to meet in Hanoi next Wednesday and Thursday following their historic first meeting in Singapore in June.

Kim Hyok Chol arrived in Hanoi with a delegation of six North Koreans, a source with direct knowledge of the visit and who was on his flight told Reuters. </s> 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> President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will meet for the second time next week at a summit in Vietnam, the continuation of their conversation about North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson talks with CNN international correspondent Will Ripley (@willripley), who covered the first meeting last year in Singapore and will be in Hanoi for the second summit. </s> President Donald Trump to announce second summit with North Korea leader Kim Jong Un, to be held Feb. 27-28 in Vietnam

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump to announce second summit with North Korea leader Kim Jong Un, to be held Feb. 27-28 in Vietnam. </s> HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — US President Trump, NKorea’s Kim Jong Un begin 2nd day of nuclear summit talks in Vietnam amid hopeful talk, skepticism. </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. </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.
The Trump administration weighs softening demands ahead of the second summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi.