Trump schedules joint agreement signing ceremony with North Korea’s Kim

Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images

US President Donald Trump (2nd L) and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un arrive for a meeting at the Sofitel Legend Metropole hotel in Hanoi on February 27, 2019.

President Donald Trump will participate a “joint agreement signing ceremony” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the White House announced Wednesday.

The ceremony will take place on Thursday, the second day of Trump’s summit with Kim in Hanoi, Vietnam. The White House did not provide details on the contents of the joint agreement.

On the agenda at the Vietnam summit are negotiation talks regarding North Korea’s nuclear weapons arsenal, which Trump has promised to denuclearize during his presidency. The summit marks the second meeting of the two leaders following last June’s talks in Singapore, which was the first meeting between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean head of state.

“Kim Jong Un and I will try very hard to work something out on Denuclearization & then making North Korea an Economic Powerhouse,” Trump tweeted on Wednesday.

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At last year’s summit, Trump and Kim signed a joint agreement that promised to “establish new U.S.-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.” The agreement included a promise from North Korea to “work toward complete denuclearization,” but did not provide any specific steps.

Trump has argued that his negotiation skills from his time in the private sector make him uniquely qualified to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. He has repeatedly derided the Obama administration for failing to reach a denuclearization agreement with the country.

“So funny to watch people who have failed for years, they got NOTHING, telling me how to negotiate with North Korea,” he tweeted before the summit. “But thanks anyway!”