Vietnam Rolls out Red Carpet for Trump and Kim, taking lead from Singapore

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s armoured limousine has arrived in Vietnam’s capital Hanoi ahead of his second nuclear summit with US president Donald Trump.

Ariana News Agency- 

Vietnam’s moped-choked capital Hanoi is well behind Singapore in the league of glitzy Southeast Asian cities, but that’s not stopping the country’s communist rulers from hoping that the United States-North Korea nuclear talks it is hosting this week will rival last year’s summit in the Lion City.

With less than 24 hours before the arrival of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump, top Vietnamese officials on Monday told reporters at a press briefing that preparations were “complete” for the two-day summit which begins Wednesday.

It is the biggest event the country is hosting since the 2017 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit, during which Trump made his first visit to Vietnam as president.

For this week’s conclave, Vietnam has had to hastily grapple with tightening security across the country as well as set up technological infrastructure for the nearly 4,000 journalists who have descended on Hanoi over the past few days.

Washington is hoping for substantive progress during the talks, the second time the two leaders are meeting since June 12 last year in Singapore, when they signed a vague declaration on the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

While Singapore had a relatively long lead time to organise the first summit, Le Hoai Trung, Vietnam’s vice foreign minister, said his officials had to work swiftly because the “more official information” of the meeting was only conveyed to Hanoi in “mid February” – leaving around 10 days to prepare for the arrival of the US and North Korean leaders.

Trump first confirmed the summit would be held in Vietnam during his State of the Union address on February 5.