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North Korean Envoy in Sweden Amid Planning for Trump-Kim Meeting

HONG KONG — North Korea’s foreign minister flew to Sweden on Thursday, amid speculation that the country could be used as a venue for hammering out details of the planned talks between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, or could be the site of the talks themselves.

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By
GERRY MULLANY
, New York Times

HONG KONG — North Korea’s foreign minister flew to Sweden on Thursday, amid speculation that the country could be used as a venue for hammering out details of the planned talks between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, or could be the site of the talks themselves.

Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho was seen at Beijing’s international airport Thursday, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported, following earlier reports that he might go to Sweden. Hours later, the Swedish Foreign Ministry confirmed that Ri would indeed be visiting the country for talks Thursday and Friday.

Sweden has long played an intermediary role between the United States and North Korea, which do not have diplomatic relations. With the United States lacking an embassy in North Korea, Sweden is the so-called protecting power that provides consular services for Americans, including meeting with citizens who are imprisoned there.

Sweden has also been the site of talks between North Korean officials and experts from the United States, South Korea and elsewhere.

Other locations that have been mentioned as possible sites for the Trump-Kim talks include the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea; Washington; Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital; Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; and Switzerland.

Trump’s decision to accept Kim’s invitation to meet shocked the diplomatic establishment last week, coming after months of bellicose insults and threats between the two leaders and their governments. Any meeting, should it actually come to fruition, would probably be held by May, said Chung Eui-yong, a South Korean official who conveyed the invitation to the White House.

Ri was seen at the Beijing airport with Choe Kang Il, the deputy director general for North American affairs at the North Korean Foreign Ministry, Yonhap reported.

Sweden’s prime minister, Stefan Löfven, said Saturday that he was willing to host a meeting between Trump and Kim.

“If we can help in any way, we will do it,” Löfven said at a news conference.

Löfven, in an interview with Sweden’s TT newswire, also cited his country’s role as a protecting power for the United States as a reason for acting as a conduit between it and North Korea.

“The fact that we are a protecting power for the U.S., have been at the border since the 1950s and have had an embassy in Pyongyang since the start of the 1970s has given us a relationship with North Korea in which we feel they trust us,” he said.

During Ri’s two-day trip to Stockholm, he will meet with Margot Wallstrom, Sweden’s foreign minister, the Swedish government said in a statement. The newspaper Dagens Nyheter said the talks would not include U.S. or South Korean officials, but added that the United States and South Korea had been involved in preparations for the talks with Ri.

Ri’s trip to Sweden came as South Korea’s foreign minister, Kang Kyung-wha, traveled to Washington on Thursday to meet with State Department officials with the aim of keeping a Trump-Kim meeting on track. The recent firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has fueled fears that a changing of the guard at the State Department could derail plans for the talks.

“It is necessary to maintain close coordination at various levels in making preparations for critical diplomatic events going forward,” Kang said, alluding to relations between Washington and Seoul, South Korea.

Kang was originally supposed to meet with Tillerson but will instead meet with John Sullivan, the deputy secretary of state, who is now serving as acting secretary. Tillerson’s expected replacement, Mike Pompeo, is skeptical that negotiations with North Korea will lead it to give up its nuclear arsenal.

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