This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The White House is planning a second meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un after the North Korean leader sent a “very warm” letter to the US president requesting one.

The White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, on Monday said Trump received a “very warm, very positive” letter from Kim and that the administration was “already in the process of coordinating” the summit.

Talks between the US and North Korea have stalled since the leaders shook hands at a summit hailed as “historic” in Singapore in June.

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Last month, Trump directed his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to delay a planned trip to North Korea “because I feel we are not making sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula”.

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But on Monday, Sanders called the letter “further evidence of progress” in the relationship between the two leaders.

She pointed to a recent military parade that apparently replaced a display of the country’s nuclear missiles with a focus on economic development. North Korea has returned the remains of US soldiers killed in the Korean war, which was fought between 1950 and 1953 and ended in armistice.

The White House would not release the letter unless Kim agrees, Sanders said.

Her upbeat message was echoed by national security advisor John Bolton, who said Kim told the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, North Korea could denuclearise “in one year”.

But he added the US “is still waiting for them”, in a speech to the Federalist Society.

“President Trump can’t make North Korea walk through the door he’s holding open,” Bolton said. “They’re the ones that have to take the steps to denuclearise, and that’s what we’re waiting for.”

The Singapore summit followed months of saber-rattling and verbal taunts between the leaders and a fresh round of US-led sanctions against Pyongyang.

The White House has claimed the summit as a success and a major step toward denuclearization on the peninsula. But critics have said the Singapore agreement achieved nothing concrete and progress has been slow.

Last week, as revelations from a book and an anonymous op-ed challenged Trump’s rosy projection of his presidency, the US president tweeted: “Kim Jong Un of North Korea proclaims ‘unwavering faith in President Trump’. Thank you to Chairman Kim. We will get it done together!”

He again praised the North Korean leader this weekend after the country made changes to its military parade.

“This is a big and very positive statement from North Korea,” Trump tweeted. “Thank you To Chairman Kim. We will both prove everyone wrong! There is nothing like good dialogue from two people that like each other! Much better than before I took office.

Trump 'almost sent tweet that North Korea would have seen as warning of attack' Read more

Bob Woodward, whose new book Fear: Trump in the White House is released on Tuesday, said that Trump alarmed Pentagon officials with a draft tweet that had it been sent could have have been interpreted by Pyongyang as a sign of imminent US attack.

“He drafts a tweet saying ‘We are going to pull our dependants from South Korea – family members of the 28,000 people there,’” Woodward said in an interview with CBS, referring to the number of families of US troops stationed on the Korean peninsula. The tweet was never sent because of a back-channel message from the North Koreans, he said.

Trump has called Woodward a “liar” and the book a “scam”.



