Araweelo News Network
A pedestrian walks in front of a screen in Tokyo on May 25, 2018 flashing a news report relating to US President Donald Trump cancelling his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. (Photo by AFP)
Washington(ANN)-The United States is still planning to send a team to Singapore – as scheduled before — in an attempt to prepare, should a summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un takes place, the White House says.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said on Saturday that a “pre-advance team for Singapore will leave as scheduled,” to make arrangements for the summit between Trump and Kim.
Trump abruptly called off the summit planned for June 12 to discuss ways of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula in Singapore. Trump blamed Pyongyang for what he described as “tremendous anger and open hostility” from the North.
Pyongyang, however, called Trump’s “unexpected” decision as “extremely regrettable,” saying that they are “open to resolving problems at any time in any way.”
On Friday night, Trump took to Twitter, writing his government was having “very productive talks with North Korea about reinstating the summit.”
“We’re talking to them now,” Trump said of the North Koreans. “They very much want to do it. We’d like to do it.”
In another development on Saturday, Kim met with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on the north side of the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas “to ensure a successful US North Korea summit,” according to Seoul’s presidential Blue House.
President Moon said earlier that he was “very perplexed” and that it was “very regrettable” that the summit was not going ahead. It was South Korean officials who first informed Washington in March that Kim was prepared to sit down with Trump and discuss its potential nuclear disarmament with Washington.
The summit that made headlines when—again abruptly— announced by Trump in March, would be the first meeting between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader.