North Korea talks heading in right direction, US envoy says

[WASHINGTON] Talks between the United States and North Korea are headed in the right direction, a top US envoy said on Friday, ahead of a rare visit to the White House by a senior North Korean official.

At a planned meeting with US President Donald Trump in Washington, Kim Yong Chol, a close aide of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, will hand over a letter from the North Korean leader as the two sides try to put a derailed summit meeting back on track.

Mr Trump hopes to meet Mr Kim Jong Un in Singapore on June 12 and pressure him to give up his nuclear weapons, although he conceded on Thursday that might require more rounds of direct negotiations.

"I'd like to see it done in one meeting," Mr Trump told Reuters. "But often times that's not the way deals work. There's a very good chance that it won't be done in one meeting or two meetings or three meetings. But it'll get done at some point."

In Seoul, US negotiators expressed optimism after meeting their North Korean counterparts for preparatory talks at Panmunjom, on the fortified border between the two Koreas.

"We believe that we're moving in the right direction to the ongoing series of consultations, including (U.S. Secretary of State) Pompeo's engagement with Vice Chairman Kim Yong Chol ... our discussions at Panmunjom and of course the discussions in Singapore as well," US Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim, a veteran diplomat and expert on North Korea, told South Korea's foreign minister, Kang Kyung-hwa.

The discussions in Panmunjom have focused on possible agenda items for Trump and Kim, while meetings in Singapore are more focused on logistics, officials said.

In a separate high-level meeting on Friday, officials from North and South Korea agreed to hold talks later this month on military issues and reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, they said.

It was not clear what North Korea's leader wrote in his letter to Trump, and White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said late on Thursday that the details of the meeting in Washington were still being worked out.

Mr Pompeo is slated to meet Mr Trump at the White House at 1 pm (1700 GMT).

After trading threats of war last year, the two men agreed to meet for an historic summit on June 12. But Mr Trump canceled last week, citing Kim's "tremendous anger and open hostility" in a string of public statements.

Even as he pulled out, though, Trump urged Kim to "call me or write" if he wanted to revive the meeting.

Within a day, both sides were in new talks to save the summit, and Kim Yong Chol flew to New York this week to meet Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, raising hopes that the summit might be back on.

Despite saying the two sides made "real progress", Mr Pompeo also cautioned that there might be no quick solution.

"They'll have to choose a path that is fundamentally different than the one that their country has proceeded on for decades. It should not be to anyone's surprise that there will be moments along the way, that this won't be straightforward," he said.

REUTERS