Trump confirms Vietnam as location for summit with Kim Jong-Un
President Donald Trump confirmed that Vietnam will be the location for his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un later this month.
At the summit, scheduled for 27-28 February, Trump hopes to make more progress on the issues discussed in their first meeting in June last year. He also said that thanks to his Korean diplomacy, a conflict in the region had been averted.
“If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea,” he declared during a speech to Congress overnight.
“Our hostages have come home, nuclear testing has stopped, and there has not been a missile launch in more than 15 months.”
Vietnam's post-Communist reforms since the late 1980s have been touted as the prime economic model for North Korea to follow.
Ahead of the second Trump-Kim summit, a US special envoy will travel to Pyongyang to plan the meeting, where a key issue will be the North Korea's denuclearisation, one of Kim's previous promises in exchange for the withdrawal of US sanctions on the country.
Even though both leaders signed a vaguely worded deal, there has not been much progress from North Korea and in fact a UN report recently found that it was protecting its nuclear and ballistic missiles, refusing to scrap them until the US removed its troops from South Korea.
On the same trip, Trump is also expected to meet China’s president, Xi Jinping, to discuss a final trade deal before the 1 March deadline date. If no deal is agreed by this date, the US said it will ramp up tariffs on Chinese products.