Guide to upcoming summit

US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will attempt to iron out the details of a history-making agreement on denuclearisation when the pair meet on Feb 27-28 in Vietnam for their second face-to-face dialogue.

Here's what to expect at the upcoming summit.

NEGOTIATORS

The North Korean diplomats and officials likely to attend the meeting are some of the country's most experienced negotiators, who have deftly wrangled with several American administrations.

Among those expected are Mr Ri Yong Ho, a seasoned diplomat who represented North Korea for years during the "six-party talks" in the 2000s and is now the country's foreign minister; and Mr Kim Yong Chol, a former spymaster and one of Mr Kim Jong Un's closest advisers.

Those expected to join Mr Trump include Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; National Security Adviser John Bolton, who has disagreed with Mr Trump on the success of the Singapore talks; and Mr Stephen Biegun, a former Ford Motor executive who was recently appointed to oversee talks with the North Koreans.

AGENDA

At the Singapore talks last June, Mr Kim and Mr Trump agreed to a four-point plan. The bullet points included establishing relations between their countries; building a "lasting and stable peace regime"; working "towards complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula"; and repatriating the remains of Americans killed during the Korean War.

Left undecided were the order in which those points were to be executed and the definitions of terms like "peace regime" and "complete denuclearisation".

Effectively, the countries are locked in the same stalemate they have been for years. Washington wants North Korea to end its nuclear weapons programme. But, for the North, those weapons are the only leverage it has to get what it really wants - a formal end to the Korean War and diplomatic recognition from the United States.

The North said as recently as last December that it would not dismantle its weapons programme until the United States diminished its military capacity in the vicinity of the Korean peninsula.

VENUE

Vietnam is a powerful symbolic choice. Like North Korea, Vietnam and the US had fraught relations for decades after a deadly war. More recently, the countries have normalised relations.

Vietnam, like North Korea, is a communist country. Through capitalist reforms it has emerged from international isolation to become one of the world's fastest-growing economies.

It is a model Mr Trump hopes will inspire North Korea.

NYTIMES

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Sunday Times on February 10, 2019, with the headline Guide to upcoming summit. Subscribe