Trump still sees June 12 Singapore summit with North Korean leader

US President Donald Trump said Saturday that things are moving “very nicely” toward a summit on June 12 in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“It’s moving along very nicely,” Trump said at the White House during a meeting with a US prisoner freed by Venezuela. “We’re looking at June 12 in Singapore. It hasn’t changed.”

Trump rattled the region on Thursday by cancelling his June 12 meeting with Kim in the Southeast Asian city-state, citing “open hostility” from Pyongyang.

But within 24 hours he reversed course, saying it could still go ahead after productive talks were held with North Korean officials.

“There are meetings going on as we speak,” Trump said. “I think there’s a lot of goodwill.”

His comments came after North Korea said Kim was “fixed” on holding the summit with Trump, raising hopes the historic meeting might still take place after a turbulent few days of diplomatic brinkmanship.

The latest conciliatory declaration from Pyongyang came as the White House confirmed it was sending a team to Singapore to prepare for the talks — a further signal that both sides were moving to cool tensions following a roller-coaster few days on the Korean Peninsula.

Kim believes a summit with Trump will be a landmark opportunity to end decades of confrontation, South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in said Sunday following a surprise meeting with the North Korean leader.

“He (Kim) also expressed his intention to put an end to the history of war and confrontation through the success of the North-US summit and to cooperate for peace and prosperity,” Moon told reporters, adding both he and Kim agreed to meet or talk in person “if necessary.”

Moon and Kim held a surprise summit in the Demilitarised Zone separating their two nations on Saturday in a scramble to save the slated June 12 summit between North Korea and the US in the city-state of Singapore.

During his two hour meeting with Kim, Moon said he urged both Washington and Pyongyang “to remove misunderstandings through direct communication and to have sufficient dialogue in advance through working-level negotiations on the agendas to be agreed upon at the summit.”

“Chairman Kim agreed on that,” he added.

Moon said the Pyongyang regime reaffirmed its commitment to give up its nuclear weapons but had its own security concerns if it took that step.

“Kim stressed again that he had a firm determination toward complete denucleariaation,” the South Korean president added.

“The thing he was uncertain about was not denuclearization but concerns on whether he could trust that the US would end its hostile policy and guarantee the security of his regime when the North denuclearizes itself.”