North Korea’s foreign minister is in Sweden for a surprise visit, ahead of a possible meeting between US President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un.<\/p>\n
Pyongyang said Ri Yong-ho’s trip was for “bilateral relations and issues of mutual concern”.<\/p>\n
Sweden has a long history of mediating between Washington and Pyongyang.<\/p>\n
So the visit has prompted speculation it might be part of preparations for the US-North Korea summit.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump last week accepted an invitation for direct talks with Mr Kim, a shock announcement from the two leaders who have traded threats and insults for months.<\/p>\n
There has been no official word from North Korea since the invitation was delivered via South Korean officials in Washington.<\/p>\n
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven told his country’s news agency TT that “if the main actors want Sweden to play a role then we are ready to do that”.<\/p>\n
“We are a country that is militarily non-aligned and have a longstanding presence in North Korea, and with the trust we enjoy we think we can play a role. But it has to be the main actors who decide which role Sweden will play.”<\/p>\n
The US said it was aware of the meeting in Stockholm, but did not know whether it was related to any US-North Korean talks.<\/p>\n
US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters in Washington that the US had yet to hear directly from Pyongyang on the planned summit.<\/p>\n
No sitting US president has ever met a North Korean leader.<\/p>\n
Such a summit, which Pyongyang has long wanted, has previously been seen as possible only after major concessions from the North Koreans.<\/p>\n
North Korea’s defiant nuclear and missile programme has led to severe international sanctions against Pyongyang in the hope they would force the regime to abandon its military threats.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
North Korea’s foreign minister is in Sweden for a surprise visit, ahead of a possible meeting between US President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. Pyongyang said Ri Yong-ho’s trip was for “bilateral relations and issues of mutual concern”. Sweden has a long history of mediating between Washington and Pyongyang. So the visit has prompted speculation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":410213,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[160,6026],"class_list":["post-410211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-north-korea","tag-sweden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=410211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/410213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=410211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=410211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=410211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}