On Saturday, delegations of the DPRK and the United States began official working negotiations in Stockholm. This happened for the first time since the February summit in Hanoi, the Ronhap agency reports.
According to it, representatives of the delegations arrived at the negotiating place – at the Elvis Strand Villa on the island of Lidigno.
Earlier it was reported that North Korean delegation, led by the special envoy of the DPRK Foreign Ministry, Kim Myung-Gil, flew to Sweden. As a part of the delegation, Stockholm also received the previous director of the North American Department of the DPRK Foreign Ministry, Kwon Jeong Geun, and his successor, Chong Chul Soo. The US delegation is led by US Special Representative to the DPRK Stephen Bigan.
A preliminary meeting between Kwon Jeong Geun and the US special representative to the DPRK Mark Lambert took place on Friday at Elvis Strand Villa on Lidinho Island. The content of the meeting remains unknown, but, according to South Korean media, it was “friendly and productive”.
According to the agency, the main negotiations are focused on making progress on the implementation of the agreement reached during the first U.S.-DPRK summit in Singapore in June 2018. The agreement includes a set of obligations to build new bilateral relations, build a lasting and stable peace and work towards the “full denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula.
Earlier, the Time, citing sources in the White House, reported that the U.S. President Donald Trump was ready to offer Kim Jong-un to suspend UN sanctions on the export of textiles and coal if the DPRK authorities agreed to dismantle the main nuclear facility in Yonben and stop the production of highly enriched uranium.
Trump and the DPRK leader Kim Jong-un have already met three times: the first summit was held in 2018 in Singapore, then the second in February 2019 in Hanoi, in June of this year, the leaders of the two countries held a symbolic meeting on the territory of the demilitarized zone in Panmunjom.
After an unsuccessful DPRK-US summit in Hanoi, the dialogue has stalled. Washington demanded more decisive action from Pyongyang to renounce nuclear weapons, the DPRK, in turn, noted that the United States did nothing at all in response to its voluntary denuclearization steps.