INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Image copyrightReutersImage caption
Communist Vietnam is seen as a model of economic and political reform for North
Korea
US President Donald Trump says his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will be held in the Vietnamese
capital Hanoi.The two men will meet on 27-28 February for talks expected to focus on persuading the communist state to give up its nuclear
Modern relations with Vietnam are seen as a model for US ties with the North.A US envoy held "very productive" talks with the North to
prepare for the new summit, Mr Trump said
The first summit between President Trump and Mr Kim in Singapore last June generated significant coverage and optimism but delivered very
few concrete developments
Both sides said they were committed to denuclearisation but gave no details of how this would be carried out or verified
Why HanoiMr Trump announced in his State of the Union address on Tuesday that he would meet Mr Kim in Vietnam but did not say where exactly
the summit would take place.On Friday evening Washington time, he tweeted that they would meet in Hanoi for "advancing the cause of
peace".Hanoi was the capital of communist North Vietnam during the bloody conflict between 1965 and 1973 which Americans refer to as the
"Vietnam War" and the Vietnamese call the "American War".Since the war, in which millions of civilians and combatants died, reunified
Vietnam has rebuilt relations with America while remaining a communist state.Image copyrightAFPImage caption
Stephen
Biegun briefed South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha on his visit to the North
North Korea isolated itself from the
outside world after the Korean War ended in 1953, and only began to mend ties with US-backed South Korea in recent years
South Korean presidential spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom said this week that Vietnam was the best choice of host for the next summit because it
and America used to "point a gun and knife at each other", Reuters news agency reports
Vietnam is also seen as a model of economic and political reform for the North to follow.An unnamed White House official with knowledge of
the second summit's planning told CBS News Vietnam had been chosen in part because of its good relationships with both the US and North
The post-war trajectory of relations between America and Vietnam was, the official added, a hopeful model for potential warmer relations
between the US and North Korea.What preparations are being madeUS envoy Stephen Biegun spent three days in discussions on the Korean
peninsula.In the Northern capital Pyongyang, he met his counterpart Kim Hyok-chol and discussed the "Singapore summit commitments of
complete denuclearisation", a US state department statement says
The two envoys will meet again before the summit
Mr Biegun warned of "some hard work to do with the DPRK [North Korea] between now and then".Image copyrightAFPImage caption
The first Kim-Trump summit was big on handshakes and rhetoric but low on detail
In South Korea, the US envoy briefed
Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha."I am confident that if both sides stay committed, we can make real progress," he told reporters.President
Trump tweeted that North Korea could become an economic "rocket".Is optimism prematureExperts caution that despite Mr Trump's assertion
that North Korea is no longer a nuclear threat, the country has never said it would give up its nuclear weapons programme without similar
The US wants North Korea to make a full declaration of all its nuclear weapons facilities and commit to destroying them, under international
supervision.In a speech at Stanford University last week, Mr Biegun said the US would not agree to lift sanctions until this happens but he
indicated it could provide assistance in other ways, saying: "We did not say we will not do anything until you do everything."He also said
Kim Jong-un had previously committed to "the dismantlement and destruction" of all North Korea's plutonium and uranium facilities, which
provide the material for nuclear weapons.Image:North Korea's leaders "view nuclear as key to regime survivalThe UN has warned that North
Korea is continuing its nuclear programme and breaking sanctions
A confidential report to the Security Council earlier this week said actions including the illegal transfer of banned goods at sea could
make sanctions - the international community's main way of putting pressure on North Korea - "ineffective"
The report said there had been a "massive increase in illegal ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum products and coal", where material is
moved from non-North Korean ships out at sea to evade monitoring
The international sanctions against North Korea are designed to severely limit its import and export abilities, with the aim of putting
pressure on the country to give up its nuclear ambitions.
