Ex-North Korea spy has a special delivery for Donald Trump

US President Donald Trump will today welcome former North ­Korean spymaster Kim Yong-chol to Washington.

North Korean envoy Kim Yong-chol, centre, heads into yesterday’s meeting with Mike Pompeo for talks on nuclear disarmament. Picture: AFP

US President Donald Trump will today welcome former North ­Korean spymaster Kim Yong-chol to Washington, where Mr Kim will hand the US President a letter from Kim Jong-un, as both countries step up the push to hold a historic leaders’ summit.

The visit comes amid intensive and delicate negotiations to narrow the differences between Mr Trump and the North Korean leader enough to declare that the June 12 summit will go ahead in Singapore.

In 36 hours of whirlwind diplomacy, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hosted dinner overlooking the New York skyline for Kim Yong-chol, one of the most trusted aides of the North Korean leader and the most senior North Korean to visit the US in almost 20 years.

Mr Pompeo showed Mr Kim, who has never visited the US before, the UN building and the new World Trade Centre, which has replaced the fallen twin towers.

“Good working dinner with Kim Yong-chol in New York tonight. Steak, corn, and cheese on the menu,” Mr Pompeo tweeted.

The following morning Mr Pompeo and Mr Kim met for two hours to try to move closer to a consensus on a possible outcome for the leaders’ summit.

Speaking later, Mr Pompeo said negotiations were “moving in the right direction’’ and that he ­believed North Korea was ser­iously considering a very different path for its future.

“I believe they are contemplating a path forward where they can make a strategic shift,” Mr Pompeo said after his meeting with Mr Kim, the former head of North Korea’s intelligence service.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in New York yesterday. Picture: AFP

“Our two countries face a pivotal moment in our relationship in which it could be nothing short of tragic to let this opportunity go to waste,” Mr Pompeo said.

He said Mr Kim was carrying a sealed letter from his leader for the US President which he wanted to deliver personally.

No senior North Korean official has ever visited Washington or the White House. The two countries do not have diplomatic relations and no North Koreans are allowed to travel more than 40km from their UN offices in New York.

Mr Pompeo said that although negotiations were proceeding well, it was a “difficult challenge’’ and there was still “a lot of work to do’’ before both sides could reach an agreement.

He said the negotiations would take time and that both sides needed to be sure something meaningful could be achieved at the summit before it went ahead.

He said the challenge was to convince Kim Jong-un that his country’s future would be more ­secure without nuclear weapons than with them.

“We’ve made real progress in the last 72 hours to setting the conditions … putting them (Trump and Kim) in a place where they can make real progress,” he said.

Mr Pompeo said he could still not predict whether the June 12 summit between Mr Trump and Kim would proceed but he said North Korea was aware the US has demanded the “complete, verifiable and irreversible’’ denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

“The proposed summit offers a historic opening for President Trump and Chairman Kim to boldly lead the US and the DPRK into a new era of peace, prosperity and security,” Mr Pompeo said.

He said if North Korea agreed to denuclearise, then “we envisage a strong, connected and secure prosperous North Korea that maintains its cultural heritage but is integrated into the community of nations’’.

“It will take bold leadership from Kim Jong-un if we are to seize this once-in-a-lifetime ­opportunity to change the course of the world,” he said. “President Trump and I believe Chairman Kim is the type of leader who can make these kinds of decisions and in the coming weeks and months we will have the ­opportunity to test whether this is the case.”

Also yesterday, Kim Jong-un told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov he was committed to denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, the official KCNA news agency reported.

“Kim Jong-un said that the DPRK’s will for denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula still remains unchanged and consistent and fixed,” KCNA reported after their meeting in Pyongyang.

Kim hoped US-North Korean relations and denuclearisation of the peninsula “will be solved on a stage-by-stage basis” and “he hoped that the solution of the ­issues will progress through effective and constructive dialogue and negotiation”, the report by the North Korean news agency said.

Earlier Mr Trump said negotiations were going well.

“We are doing very well with North Korea,” he said. “Our Secretary of State is having very good meetings.

“I believe they will be coming down to Washington on Friday. A letter being delivered to me from Kim Jong-un. It is very important to them.

“I think it will be very positive. We will see what happens. It is all a process. Hopefully we will have a meeting on the 12th (of June).”

(Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia)

additional reporting: afp