U.S. President Donald Trump has spoken with Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, a day after announcing he and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will hold an historic meeting in the southeast Asian city-state.
The White House said Friday that the president thanked the prime minister for his willingness to host the June 12 meeting. In a statement, the administration also said the two leaders discussed regional security in the Indo-Pacific region and reaffirmed the relationship between the United States and Singapore.
The statement called that relationship “one of the United States’ closest partnerships in Asia for more than 50 years.”
Trump announced the time and place of the meeting in a tweet Thursday.
“We will both try to make it a very special moment for World Peace!” Trump said on Twitter, hours after he personally welcomed home three Americans freed by North Korea.
After greeting the men at Joint Base Andrews early Thursday, the president expressed thanks to North Korean leader Kim for releasing them, stating that “I really think he wants to do something” to bring North Korea “into the real world.”
Trump has said the goal for his upcoming talks with Kim is for North Korea to agree to denuclearize.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who traveled to North Korea to secure the release of the detainees, said holding such a summit would have been more difficult had the Americans still been detained.
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