Trump and Kim to meet in Singapore on June 12

Singapore will host the historic June 12 meeting between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, and the destination will give North Korea’s leader the one thing he craves most: legitimacy.

Confirmation of the meeting came as Mr Trump personally welcomed home three American detainees released by North Korea in a middle-of-the-night ceremony broadcast live around the world.

Later Victoria Coates, Senior Director for International Negotiations at the National Security Council, White House, told reporters that the meeting could be scuttled if Kim Jong-un did something unacceptable to the United States.

The three men emerged from a USA government plane, flashing peace signs high above their heads.

The church, which referred to him as Kim Hak-sung, said in a statement that he was devoted to ministry and was detained by North Korean authorities after he was caught trying to return to his home in Dandong, China. “I appreciate Kim Jong Un doing this and allowing them to go”, he said during a press conference. Asked why Mr Kim had agreed to the move, Mr Trump said: “I really think he wants to do something [to] bring that country into the real world”.

Pompeo has described USA objectives for the summit as the immediate “permanent, verifiable irreversible dismantling of North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction program”.

The three former prisoners are scheduled to arrive at Joint Base Andrews, outside Washington, D.C., at 2 a.m. Thursday and will be met by the president.

“So those were the initial steps that the North Koreans took”.

Details of Trump’s itinerary have yet to emerge, but it’s possible he will fly directly to Singapore after attending a summit of the Group of Seven major economies in Canada June 8-9.

Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop is hopeful the meeting will be a circuit-breaker for North Korea’s illegal behaviour.

Trump offered a compliment to the North Korean dictator, saying “We want to thank Kim Jong-un, who really was excellent to these three incredible people”.

Crediting himself for recent progress, Trump has pointed to Kim’s willingness to come to the negotiating table as validating US moves to tighten sanctions – branded “maximum pressure” by the president. The three men were taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for testing.

Speaking to NBC News, Pence says: “In this moment, the regime in North Korea has been dealing, as far as we can see, in good faith”. We didn’t pay for them…

“We studied the nuclear test that occurred September 3 in North Korea using space data and found the whole mountain edifice, Punggye-ri, collapsed and is likely nonusable for further tests”, said Sylvain Barbot, professor of Earth sciences at USC Dornsife.

“You hit singles, you hit doubles; every once in a while we may be able to hit a home run”, President Barack Obama said of his own foreign policy.

When Trump and Kim sit down in the sweltering Southeast Asian city state, the two relatively new and untested leaders face a nuclear puzzle that has eluded seasoned diplomats for decades.

Warned by Obama days after his election that the threat posed by Pyongyang could define his presidency, Trump answered Kim’s threats with bellicose warnings of his own and rallied an global pressure campaign against North Korea.

South Korea said on Thursday it had high hopes for the summit.

Trump had demurred on how likely their return was, telling reporters on Tuesday “we’ll all soon be finding out”.