Date, venue of Trump-Kim meeting to be announced in next 'couple of days'

US President Donald Trump says the date and location of his upcoming summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will be announced within days.

“We want to get peace,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday. “We're setting up meetings right now and I think it's probably going to be announced over the next couple of days — location and date.”

The US president had a day earlier expressed the idea of holding his meeting with the North Korean leader in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas.

“There's something that I thought was intriguing. I think that some people maybe don't like the look of that and some people like it very much. I threw it out today as an idea,” Trump said of the site on Monday.

Trump has said the talks would occur in May or early June.

The DMZ is the place where Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in recently concluded historic talks over denuclearization and formally ending the Korean War.

The North Korean leader agreed for a meeting with Trump after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Kim secretively in North Korea during the first weekend of April.

PressTV-Trump says CIA chief met North Korean leader

US President Donald Trump has confirmed that CIA director Mike Pompeo recently traveled to Pyongyang for a secret meeting with North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un.

The extraordinary meeting between one of Trump's most trusted officials and Kim was construed as part of an effort to lay the groundwork for direct talks between Trump and Kim about North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

Trump had previously acknowledged that Washington and Pyongyang were in contact at "very high levels."

Tensions were running high between Washington and Pyongyang over North Korea's missile and nuclear programs.

Trump and Kim have repeatedly traded insults and threats of military attacks that raised fears of a war between Pyongyang and Washington in recent months.

Trump's administration claims that it prefers a diplomatic solution to the crisis, but it also says all options are on the table, including military action.

Washington insists that any future talks should be aimed at North Korea giving up its nuclear weapons, something Pyongyang rejects.

The UN Security Council unanimously imposed new sanctions on North Korea in December last year following an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test, seeking to further limit its access to refined petroleum products and crude oil. 

North Korea has been under a raft of crippling UN sanctions since 2006 over its nuclear tests as well as multiple rocket and missile launches. Pyongyang firmly defends its weapons programs as a deterrent against potential aggression by the US and its regional allies, including South Korea.

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