21 September 2018 10:55 am
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un wants to hold a second summit with U.S. President Donald Trump soon to hasten denuclearisation, South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Thursday quoted the North’s leader as saying at a summit this week.
Kim, who recently proposed the second meeting with Trump after their unprecedented June summit in Singapore, added that declaring a formal end to the 1950-53 Korean War would prompt rapid further steps by the North to abandon its nuclear and missile programmes, Moon said.
“Chairman Kim expressed his wish that he wanted to complete denuclearisation quickly and focus on economic development,” Moon told a news conference in Seoul, describing his three-day summit with Kim in the North’s capital of Pyongyang.
“He said he hoped (U.S. Secretary of State) Mike Pompeo would visit North Korea soon, and also a second summit with Trump would take place in the near future, in order to move the denuclearisation process along quickly,” Moon said.
Kim pledged to work toward the “complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula” during two meetings with Moon this year and at his summit with Trump, but talks on how to implement the vague commitments have since faltered.
An end-of-war declaration would not affect the presence of U.S. troops and the United Nations Command in South Korea, Moon said, adding that Kim shared his view.
SEOUL, (Reuters) Sept 20 -