US and North Korea to continue summit talks next week

Discussions on Trump-Kim meeting at the end of February will be held in Hanoi

A man watches a TV screen showing images of U.S. President Donald Trump, left, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Saturday, Feb. 9, 2019. Trump said Friday that he will hold his second summit with Kim in Hanoi and predicted that the authoritarian country would someday become "a great Economic Powerhouse" under Kim's leadership. Korean letters on the screen read: "North Korea will become a different kind of rocket - an economic one!" (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
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The United States and North Korea will hold further talks next week to prepare for a second summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un later this month, Seoul said on Sunday.

The news comes a day after Stephen Biegun, the US special representative for North Korea, said more dialogue was needed before the summit in Vietnam.

"North Korea and the US have agreed to continue negotiations in a third country in Asia during the week of February 17," said Seoul's presidential spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom.

He did not provide further details.

Mr Biegun travelled to Pyongyang last week for three days of preparatory meetings with North Korean officials, with the State Department saying the talks focused on Mr Trump and Mr Kim's "commitments of complete denuclearisation, transforming US-DPRK relations and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula".

Mr Trump and Mr Kim are to meet in Hanoi from February 27 to 28 following their summit in Singapore last June.

That meeting — the first between the leaders — produced a vaguely-worded document in which Mr Kim pledged to work towards "the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula".

But progress has since stalled with the two sides disagreeing over what that means and analysts say tangible progress on denuclearisation will be needed for the second summit if it is to avoid being dismissed as "reality TV".

Mr Trump's intelligence chief, Dan Coats, has expressed scepticism over the North's denuclearisation, and told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Pyongyang was "unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons".