The United States (US) President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un are set to meet in Singapore today for a highly anticipated summit.<\/p>\n
Singapore is the Switzerland of Southeast Asia, wealthy and exclusive, a politically neutral small state surrounded by larger powers.<\/p>\n
Some 3,000 journalists are expected to descend on Singapore. Hotel rooms are at near capacity and taxi drivers are bracing for excessive demand and traffic gridlock.<\/p>\n
The Tanglin neighbourhood surrounding the Shangri-La Hotel and the entire resort island of Sentosa will be locked down as \u201cspecial event\u201d areas with security measures such as road closures and spot checks.<\/p>\n
Trump and Kim arrived in Singapore on Sunday ahead of today\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n
Kim met with Singapore\u2019s Prime Minister Lee at his Istana residence after his arrival, in talks which North Korea\u2019s KCNA news agency said proceeded \u201cin an amicable and friendly atmosphere\u201d.<\/p>\n
The outcomes of today\u2019s unprecedented meeting are highly uncertain, but analysts say that the mere fact that the meeting is on is a step forward.<\/p>\n
But there are doubts denuclearisation of North Korea is achievable in the short term.<\/p>\n
\u201cNorth Korea cannot denuclearise completely right now and hope to be safe from a president who said we\u2019re going to rain fire and fury on you, from a country that\u2019s been calling you evil for 25 years,\u201d said Horacio Falcao, a negotiations expert at the Insead graduate business school in Singapore.<\/p>\n
One analyst told Al Jazeera Trump will seek to promote his image as a deal-maker.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump is a publicity seeker. He sees the summit not as a means to an end, but the end itself. He\u2019s much more interested in the theatrics of public policy, rather than the substance,\u201d Resnick said.<\/p>\n
Before today\u2019s meeting, officials from US and North Korean delegations have finished up a meeting in preparation of Tuesday\u2019s summit.<\/p>\n
US ambassador to the Philippines, Sung Kim, led the US delegation while Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui was part of North Korea\u2019s delegation.<\/p>\n
The meeting lasted more than two hours and took place at the Ritz Carlton.<\/p>\n
US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, tweeted the talks had been \u201csubstantive and detailed\u201d. \u2014Al Jazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United States (US) President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un are set to meet in Singapore today for a highly anticipated summit. Singapore is the Switzerland of Southeast Asia, wealthy and exclusive, a politically neutral small state surrounded by larger powers. Some 3,000 journalists are expected to descend on Singapore. Hotel rooms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":66692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66690"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66693,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66690\/revisions\/66693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}