Second Trump-Kim summit planned for Vietnam: Report

The second summit between United States President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un over denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula will be held in the Vietnamese coastal city of Da Nang in late February, according to a media report.

The White House last month announced the second meeting between the two leaders will be held in late February following discussions with Kim Yong Chol, North Korea’s lead negotiator on nuclear talks. The first such meeting between the two leaders happened in June in Singapore.

A senior Trump administration official and a source with knowledge of the meeting told CNN that the current plan is for the second summit between President Trump and the North Korean leader Un to be held in the Vietnamese coastal city of Da Nang. The plan is being finalised.

Vietnam had been widely believed to be the location.

The source said there are no discussions right now for Trump to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping around the summit, but the source says Xi is very supportive of the summit.

Trump’s agenda during the summit is still not clear.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday that the next summit between the two leaders to be held somewhere in Asia.

On Thursday, the State Department’s top envoy on North Korea said the US is not looking to invade the reclusive nation and seemed to strongly signal that the US would be willing to formally end the Korean War.

Trump and Kim’s first summit in Singapore ended with a commitment from the North Korean leader to “work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula,” but negotiations appear to have stalled since then. Many critics accuse the Trump administration of failing to get Kim to agree to specifics at their first summit.

On Wednesday, Trump publicly rebuked his intelligence officials after they had contradicted several of his foreign policy claims -- including on North Korea -- during a Senate hearing on Tuesday.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said during the hearing that North Korea “is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons”.

Central Intelligence Agency Director Gina Haspel said Pyongyang “is committed to developing a long-range nuclear-armed missile that would pose a direct threat to the United States”.

Trump said on Thursday that those same intelligence chiefs told him their comments had been taken out of context and had been “totally misquoted” and that the administration was all on the same page.