IT'S BACK ON
Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un summit WILL go ahead on June 12 after US President meets with North Korea adviser at White House
PRESIDENT Donald Trump's historic summit with Kim Jong-un is back on after he met with a North Korean envoy at the White House.
It comes after a letter from Kim Jong-un was today passed onto the US President, which he described as "very nice" and "very interesting";.
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Trump made the announcement, just a week after he cancelled the summit after an hour-long meeting with a top North Korean official who delivered a letter from the North Korean leader.
"We're going to deal," Trump told reporters moments after the meeting ended.
He also said it was likely that more than one meeting would be necessary.
He concluded, "I think you're going to have a very positive result in the end. We will see what we will see."
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Trump's announcement comes after top North Korean official Kim Yong Chol visited the White House Friday to deliver the letter.
Trump had withdrawn from the summit which was due to take place in Singapore on June 12 with a strongly worded letter of his own, citing "tremendous anger and open hostility" by Pyongyang but also urged Kim to call him.
By the next day, he was signalling the event could be back on after a conciliatory response from North Korea.
Kim Yong Chol was greeted at the White House by chief of staff John Kelly and then whisked into the Oval Office.
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He is the most senior North Korean to visit the White House in 18 years, a highly symbolic sign of easing tensions after fears of war escalated amid North Korean nuclear and missile tests last year.
Questions remain about what a deal on the North's nuclear weapons would look like though Trump said Friday he believed that Kim would agree to denuclearization.
US defence and intelligence experts have repeatedly assessed the communist state to be on the threshold of having the capability to strike anywhere in the continental US with a nuclear-tipped missile.
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Kim Yong Chol left his hotel in New York City early on Friday for the trip to Washington in a convoy of SUVs.
Mike Pompeo, the former CIA chief who has travelled to North Korea and met with Kim Jong-un twice in the past two months, said he believed the country's leaders are "contemplating a path forward where they can make a strategic shift, one that their country has not been prepared to make before."
Yet he also said a news conference that difficult work remains including hurdles that may appear to be insurmountable as negotiations progress on the US demand for North Korea's complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization.
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"We will push forward to test the proposition that we can achieve that outcome," he said.
Despite the upbeat message in the US, Kim Jong-un, in a meeting with Russia's foreign minister on Thursday, complained about the US trying to spread its influence in the region, a comment that may complicate the summit.
"As we move to adjust to the political situation in the face of US hegemonism, I am willing to exchange detailed and in-depth opinions with your leadership and hope to do so moving forward," Kim told Sergey Lavrov.
North Korea's flurry of diplomatic activity following an increase in nuclear weapons and missile tests in 2017 suggests that Kim is eager for sanctions relief to build his economy and for the international legitimacy a summit with Trump would provide.
Trump views a summit as a legacy-defining opportunity to make a nuclear deal, but he has left the world guessing since canceling the meeting last week in an open letter to Kim that complained of the North's "tremendous anger and open hostility."
North Korea's conciliatory response to that letter appears to have put the summit back on track.
Kim Yong Chol is the most senior North Korean visitor to the United States since Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok visited Washington in 2000 to meet President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
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That was the last time the two sides, which are technically at war, attempted to arrange a leadership summit.
It was an effort that ultimately failed as Clinton's time in office ran out, and relations turned sour again after George W Bush took office in early 2001 with a tough policy on the North.
Kim Yong Chol, vice chairman of the North Korean ruling party's central committee, was allowed into the United States despite being on a US sanctions list.
And North Korean officials are not normally allowed to travel outside the New York area.
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