N. Korea state media slams US critics of Trump-Kim summit

Pyongyang's state media on Sunday slammed US critics of the planned meeting between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un a day after the North Korean leader boarded an armoured train en route to the summit venue in Vietnam.

The two leaders are due to meet next week in Hanoi after their groundbreaking first summit in Singapore last June, which produced a vague statement on the "denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula".

Senior officials from Washington and Pyongyang are holding preparatory talks in Hanoi -- which are expected to be largely focused on establishing the agenda for the summit.

Stephen Biegun, the US Special Representative on North Korea who is leading the American delegation, acknowledged last month that Pyongyang and Washington did not have a "shared agreement of what denuclearisation entails".

The lack of progress since the first summit has fuelled scepticism in Washington over the North's intentions, with Trump's own intelligence chief saying Pyongyang was unlikely to completely give up its weapons programme.

But in a sharply-worded commentary issued Sunday, the North's official Korean Central News Agency slammed US critics and urged the Trump administration to seize "the rare historic opportunity".

"The US administration must not forget last year's lesson when it plunged the bilateral negotiations into a stalemate, being swayed by the opponent forces," it said.

"If the upcoming DPRK-US negotiations end without results as wished by the opponent forces, the US people will never be cleared of the security threats," it added.

Pyongyang is seeking relief from punishing UN sanctions and rejects demands for what it calls its "unilateral" disarmament.

Washington insists that the measures must stay in place until North Korea gives up its nuclear arsenal.

Experts say tangible progress is needed in Hanoi to avoid the talks being dismissed as a publicity stunt.

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Trump and Kim to have one-one-one meeting at Vietnam summit
Washington (AFP) Feb 21, 2019
US President Donald Trump will have a one-on-one meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong during their summit in Vietnam next week, a US official said Thursday. The two leaders, who met for the first time in Singapore last June, are due to hold talks in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi on February 27-28. Trump is seeking to persuade the North Korean leader to abandon his nuclear arsenal. A US officials said next week's meeting would be "similar in format to what we saw last June in Singapore... ... read more