Trump-Kim meeting arrangement to take few weeks: US

The US Secretary of State said on Friday that it would take a few weeks to arrange a meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

"Now it's a question of agreeing on the timing of the first meeting between the two of them, and that will take some weeks before we get all that worked out," Efe quoted Rex Tillerson as saying.

Tillerson said Trump himself had made the decision to meet with Kim despite their well-publicized trading of insults in recent months, adding that he was not surprised in the least and that his boss had had the matter "on his mind for quite some time."

On Thursday at the White House, the head of South Korea's National Security Office, Chung Eui-yong, delivered Trump a message that he had received from Kim during a high-level meeting in Pyongyang.

"President Trump appreciated the briefing and said he would meet Kim Jong-un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization," Chung, who headed up a South Korean delegation to Washington, said.

In an offer aimed at kick starting the negotiations, Kim has pledged to freeze ballistic missile tests and embark upon a denuclearization process provided his regime is given security guarantees, the South Koreans said.

Tillerson said on Friday that he was surprised at the North Korean leader's initiative in proposing the meeting and at his being so "forward-leaning" earlier this week during his first-ever direct talks with a South Korean delegation.

--IANS

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