WUZHEN: China's foreign minister said Wednesday the summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un can be an "important step" towards advancing denuclearisation and peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Beijing is North Korea's sole major ally and Kim travelled for more than two days by train across China on his way to Hanoi.

The North Korean leader met with Chinese President Xi Jinping for a fourth time in January, showing that Beijing retains a key role in the diplomatic shuffle.

"In this Hanoi meeting, we can not only increase the hard-won warming up of the situation, but we can also take an important step towards advancing the denuclearisation of the peninsula and establishing a peace mechanism," Foreign Minister Wang Yi said after talks with his Russian and Indian counterparts in the eastern Chinese city of Wuzhen.

Trump was due to meet Kim for dinner later Wednesday and meet again on Thursday.

Following a historic first meeting in Singapore in June that produced a vaguely worded statement about denuclearisation, analysts say the second summit in Vietnam's capital Hanoi must this time put substance ahead of bonhomie.</s>Kim Jong-un greets Vietnamese officials and residents at Dong Dang railway station in Vietnam's Lang Son Province as he arrives on February 26, 2019. Photo by VnExpress/Giang Huy

This is the first visit by a North Korean leader to Vietnam in 55 years since Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un’s grandfather, visited in 1964.

Kim is scheduled to hold talks with Party General Secretary and President Nguyen Phu Trong at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi on Friday afternoon, visit and lay wreaths at the Monument to War Heroes and Martyrs and visit the Mausoleum of President Ho Chi Minh.

He will leave on Saturday.

Kim arrived in Vietnam on Tuesday morning after a more than 60-hour train journey from Pyongyang. His second summit with U.S. President Trump ended in Hanoi Thursday without any deal being signed because of disagreements over lifting of the sanctions imposed on North Korea.

In 1950 North Korea became one of the first countries to establish diplomatic relations with Vietnam after only China and the Soviet Union.

It dispatched hundreds of military pilots to Vietnam to support the country during the Vietnam War, trained hundreds of students in the 1960s and 1970s, and also supported Vietnam with cement, steel, fabrics, medicines, and fertilizers.

Between 1994 and 2012 Vietnam donated rice and cash several times to North Korea for relief.

The two countries established and cemented relations at the highest level. In 1957 President Ho Chi Minh visited North Korea before Kim Il-sung made a reciprocal visit to Vietnam.

In 1961 then Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Dong visited North Korea, and in November 1964 Kim made another visit.

During Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh's visit to North Korea last month, his hosts thanked Vietnam's stance and efforts to push talks to achieve peace, security, cooperation, and development on the Korean Peninsula.</s>N. Korea leader Kim Jong Un heads out for official visit with Vietnamese leaders a day after summit breakdown with Trump

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — N. Korea leader Kim Jong Un heads out for official visit with Vietnamese leaders a day after summit breakdown with Trump.</s>North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un kept his trusted sister close by Thursday as he met with President Donald Trump for their historic nuclear summit in Vietnam.

Kim Yo Jong was seen standing close by, watching on from the sidelines as the two world leaders greeted each other in Hanoi.

Kim and Trump resumed their summit on Thursday morning local time – as the U.S. president predicted a 'fantastic success' but the North Korean dictator said it was 'too early' to say they would reach a deal.

Experts say Kim Yo Jong functions as her brother's chief of staff, managing his engagements, offering trusted advice and acting as a gatekeeper.

Kim Yo Jong was the youngest of former leader Kim Jong-Il's seven children to four different women, and has the same mother as Kim Jong-Un. As a favorite daughter, she received key government positions after returning from her education in Switzerland. She often led advance parties to inspect sites before official engagements, and held various administrative posts. Ms Kim's power and influence increased when her brother inherited the presidency in 2011 and she began helping with policy making and reviewing intelligence. Last year she even ascended to the North Korean Communist Party Politburo, the top council under President Kim. Balbina Hwang, visiting professor at Georgetown University and founder of the National Committee on North Korea, said she held great sway over her brother's decisions.

A day earlier she was pictured running after her brother when they arrived in Dong Dang and has already been seen holding a large crystal ashtray as he smoked.

In Apirl she was the only woman at the negotiating table as her brother met with South Korea.

She was also on hand at the more informal moments of the summit, collecting his white gloves after a ceremonial tree-planting.

Ms Kim was the first member of the ruling party to venture south of the border since the 1953 Korean War armistice as the face of its Winter Olympics delegation.

Trump has once again asserted that he was in 'no rush' to make an agreement – following an early report by NBC that the US was prepared to back away from a demand that North Korea provide a full accounting of its nuclear weapons programs.

'I think we'll be together a lot over the years,' Trump said. 'I can't speak for today but over a little bit longer term .. we're going to have a fantastic success.'

A reporter asked Kim in Korean if he was confident of an agreement. Kim responded in Korean: ''It's too early to say. I would not say I'm pessimistic.'

'I have a feeling that good results will come,' Kim added.

According to NBC News, US officials aren't demanding that North Korea agree to fully disclose its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.

This decision hints at the possibility that North Korea has no intention of full denuclearizing.

The Hanoi summit is Trump's second with Kim since an inconclusive meeting in Singapore in June that produced much fanfare but little substance and there had been little sign of concrete progress since.

The U.S. president nevertheless appeared upbeat with Kim even as his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen testified at a congressional hearing in Washington, calling Trump a 'conman' who knew in advance about the release of stolen emails aimed at hurting his Democratic rival in the 2016 election campaign.</s>Tulsi Gabbard has said that while she is upset by the lack of progress at the talks in Vietnam, North Korea has all the reasons to believe its nukes are the only deterrent against regime change, taking in account US record.

Hawaii Rep. and Democratic presidential hopeful Gabbard sat down for a brief one-on-one with Fox News' Tucker Carlson on Thursday, relaying her thoughts on the summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and lambasting the US interventionist political doctrine.

The summit, which wrapped up abruptly with Trump walking out of the talks after refusing to offer any relief of sanctions to Pyongyang, has been described as a flop, having done little to advance the denuclearization issue.

Gabbard said that although she was "deeply concerned" that the summit had ended without any agreement, she was not surprised.

She argued that the regime change policy championed by the US is to blame for undermining its own security as it is ultimately responsible for the failure in breaking the Korean stalemate.

The congresswoman noted that the US playing global gendarme by "overthrowing and toppling dictators or countries who we don't like" comes with a heavy price to both the American people, who pay "trillions of dollars" to fund these military adventures, and to the people in the countries that suffer as a result of the interventions.

It is the military industrial complex and the top guns in Washington that "invested their entire careers" in drumming up support for regime change who profit from constant wars, not the American people, Gabbard said.

READ MORE: Caving under MSM pressure? Tulsi Gabbard interview on The View has some supporters fuming

Asked why Americans still continue to back military action despite overwhelming evidence against it, Gabbard lamented that people are being duped into naively thinking they are helping those in need.

"The most unfortunate thing is that they sell them under the guise of humanitarianism to American people, who want to be able to do good things, to be able to help people who are suffering, but not pointing out the fact that regime change led by the US has resulted in far more suffering for the people who they supposedly were trying to help."

Gabbard has been taking heat from mainstream media for her non-establishment take on foreign policy, traditionally an area of silent bipartisan consensus. The Hawaii lawmaker has been labelled an "Assad apologist" for her fact-finding trip into Syria in 2017, during which she met with Syrian President Bashar Assad, and a Kremlin stooge. However, despite all the torrent of criticism, there have been no attempts by either side of the aisle to dispute her non-interventionist argument in essence, Gabbard said.

"Constantly I see people from both parties resorting to name-calling or superficial attacks, because they refuse to engage on the substance of this argument about why they continue to push for and try to wage these regime change wars ignoring these disastrous consequences."

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!</s>The parents of Otto Warmbier, the U.S. citizen who died in 2017 after being imprisoned by North Korea, issued a stinging rebuke Friday after President Donald Trump’s defense of dictator Kim Jong Un.

“We have been respectful during this summit process. Now we must speak out. Kim and his evil regime are responsible for the death of our son Otto,” Fred and Cindy Warmbier said in a statement. “Kim and his evil regime are responsible for unimaginable cruelty and inhumanity. No excuses or lavish praise can change that.”

Their statement came one day after Trump’s summit with Kim in Vietnam. In response to a question at a press conference, Trump said he believed Kim when the North Korean leader said he knew nothing about Warmbier’s imprisonment.

“He tells me that he didn’t know about it and I will take him at his word,” Trump said. Kim “felt badly about it,” he added. “He felt very badly.”

Warmbier was arrested in 2016 for allegedly stealing a propaganda banner while on a trip to North Korea. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor, but entered a coma in unspecified circumstances shortly afterwards. He was released in 2017 and sent back to the U.S., but died just days later.

Fred Warmbier described his son’s condition upon his return to the U.S. “He was blind, he was deaf,” he said. He was “jerking violently making these inhuman sounds.”

Trump suggested at the summit that Warmbier’s fate could have been due to North Korea’s prison conditions, rather than the personal fault of Kim. “Those prisons are rough – they’re rough places, and bad things happen,” he said.

Human rights groups have criticized Trump’s failure criticize Kim on his country’s abuse of its population, with Amnesty International saying Trump “gave Kim a platform on the world stage only to showcase his own disdain for human rights.”</s>Trump-Kim go one-on-one: Who will know what was really said?

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Only four other ears on the planet heard what President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said to each other Wednesday during a one-on-one chat that began their second nuclear summit.

The two leaders' interpreters were the only others privy to their conversation, raising concerns about why Trump would risk meeting Kim, who has threatened the U.S. with nuclear strikes and has a dismal human rights record, without staff to take notes.

Absent a detailed historical record and corroborating witnesses, the leaders could potentially leave a meeting and misrepresent what transpired, prompting a kind of he said-he said showdown of words.

More one-on-one talks between Trump and Kim are scheduled for Thursday, when the two leaders dig into the meat of their nuclear talks.

Trump has had private confabs with world leaders before that have raised red flags.

Early in his presidency, he met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Germany with only a Kremlin interpreter present. Last year, after Trump spent more than two hours talking with Putin in Helsinki, Finland, Democrats tried to subpoena Trump's translator to testify in Congress about what was said.

Republicans blocked it. The White House has never provided information on what Putin and Trump talked about. Even Trump's director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, said he didn't know.

"It is utterly amazing, utterly amazing, that no one knows what was said," Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said at the time.

Trump's translator in Wednesday's private chat was Yun-hyang Lee, the U.S. State Department's division chief for interpreting services, who also translated for the president at his first meeting with Kim last year in Singapore. The White House identified Kim's translator as Sin Hye Yong.

Some experts on past U.S.-North Korean diplomatic efforts worry the private sit-downs give Kim an opportunity to win concessions from Trump that working-level officials would have advised him not to offer.

Before the summit, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said he thought Kim requested the private meeting with hopes that he could "elicit concessions from President Trump that might not otherwise be possible if it was just our diplomats talking one-on-one."

Others think there's nothing wrong with the president's penchant for one-on-one meetings with world leaders.

"I don't find that they're nefarious," said retired Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis with the Defense Priorities think tank, which advocates against overusing military action to solve foreign policy challenges.

"I think he's just more comfortable doing it that way," Davis told reporters at a summit briefing.

Davis pointed to President Richard Nixon's many private confabs with Chinese leaders when he reopened relations with China in the 1970s.

Last year, at the Singapore summit, Trump caught U.S. ally South Korea off guard by announcing the suspension of major U.S. military exercises with the South. Trump critics said he squandered critical U.S. leverage before the North took any concrete steps toward denuclearization.

It was widely presumed that Trump made the decision during his private talks with Kim — his description of the war games as "very provocative" seemed to be in line with North Korea's view of the drills as rehearsals for invasions. Both Washington and Seoul have insisted for years that the exercises were routine and defensive in nature.

Bong Young-shik, an analyst at Seoul's Yonsei University, was less worried, saying that the criticism Trump faced in Singapore could make him less likely to make huge, impulsive decisions during his private meetings with Kim this time around.

"There's always a certain level of risk in this kind of meeting, but it's hard to say Trump will be dragged into a decision by Kim just because of what happened in Singapore," Bong said.

Former President Barack Obama was known to occasionally hold impromptu chats with leaders on the sidelines of major global summits with only their interpreters at their sides.

At former President Ronald Reagan's first meeting with then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva, Switzerland, in November 1985, the two men met alone with only trusted interpreters. Only 15 minutes had been allotted for the discussion, but it went on for an hour.

Associated Press writer Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

Follow all of AP's summit coverage at https://apnews.com/Trump-KimSummit</s>President Donald Trump faced a bipartisan backlash Thursday after saying he did not believe North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was responsible for the death of American student Otto Warmbier.

"We must remember Otto, and we should never let North Korea off the hook for what they did to him," Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who represents the Warmbier family's home state, said in a statement a few hours after Trump completed his second summit with Kim in Vietnam.

Trump said Thursday at a press conference in Hanoi at the conclusion of the summit that he did not hold Kim responsible for Warmbier's death.

"I don't believe he knew about it," Trump said of Kim. "He tells me that he didn't know about it, and I will take him at his word."

Trump's comments are a reversal from his past statements. In his 2018 State of the Union address, he criticized North Korea's "depraved character" and blamed the country's "dictatorship" for Warmbier's injuries and eventual death.

Warmbier, 22, was arrested for taking a propaganda banner from a hotel while on a visit to Pyongyang in January 2016 and later sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. He suffered horrific injuries and died shortly after being released from 17 months of detention. The cause of death remains unknown, as does the cause of his injuries.

"There’s something wrong with Putin, Kim Jong Un — in my view, thugs — that the president chooses to believe," she said.

Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Fox News that "the blood of Otto Warmbier is on the hands of Kim Jong Un" and that there is "no doubt in my mind" that Kim knew about Warmbier’s detention and allowed it to happen.

"Look, Otto Warmbier, they made a spectacle out of him to the world. Accusing him of being a traitor, a spy. And they executed him. The blood of Otto Warmbier is on the hands of Kim Jong Un. There is no doubt in my mind that he knew about it, he allowed it to happen, and the responsibility lies directly with Kim Jong Un," he said.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said Trump's remarks show he believed an "obvious lie" by Kim.

"Otto Warmbier's bogus arrest and brutal murder was an international incident," Warner said. "Of course, Kim knew about it. Apparently, the president of the United States is the only one who believes this obvious lie."

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., accused Trump of flinching in front of Kim regarding the student's death.

"No American president has ever cowered in front of dictators like @realDonaldTrump," he said in a tweet.

Trump abruptly ended his summit with Kim without any concessions on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program. Some lawmakers approved of the move, hoping it would keep the door open for more diplomacy and prevent an unsatisfactory deal.

"Walking away from the summit was better than making a bad deal. It’s also the result of a poorly planned strategy," Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House intelligence committee, tweeted Thursday. "But accepting Kim's denial of involvement in Warmbier’s death? Detestable, and harkens back to Trump's duplicitous acceptances of denials from other dictators."

"Americans know the cruelty that was placed on Otto Warmbier by the North Korean regime," Nikki Haley, Trump's former U.N. ambassador, tweeted Thursday.

Former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania told CNN that it was "reprehensible" that Trump gave cover to Kim regarding Warmbier’s death.

"This is the conundrum of Donald Trump for many of us who like his policies and don't like a lot of the things he does and says ... This is reprehensible what he just did," said Santorum, who credited the president for not making a deal with Kim. "I mean he gave cover ... to a leader who knew very well what was going on with Otto Warmbier. And again, I don't understand why the president does this, I am disappointed to say the least that he did it."

When asked about Warmbier's death, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters there was "no question" North Korea was responsible for human rights abuses.

“I've never heard someone who did something wrong jump up and say, 'Yeah, I did it, I did it,'” Romney said. "I think there's no question that the government of North Korea has been responsible for a whole host of human rights abuses and atrocities."

Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, said it's hard to believe that Kim didn't know what happened to Warmbier, comparing it to Trump taking Russian President Vladimir Putin's word over U.S. intelligence that Russia didn't interfere in the 2016 elections.

"I think the president is very gullible in this regard," she said. "He seems to have a very odd affinity toward dictators ... it is very odd, and I think it’s misplaced."</s>Trump-Kim go one-on-one: Who will know what was really said?

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Only four other ears on the planet heard what President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said to each other Wednesday during a one-on-one chat that began their second nuclear summit.

The two leaders' interpreters were the only others privy to their conversation, raising concerns about why Trump would risk meeting Kim, who has threatened the U.S. with nuclear strikes and has a dismal human rights record, without staff to take notes.

Absent a detailed historical record and corroborating witnesses, the leaders could potentially leave a meeting and misrepresent what transpired, prompting a kind of he said-he said showdown of words.

More one-on-one talks between Trump and Kim are scheduled for Thursday, when the two leaders dig into the meat of their nuclear talks.

Trump has had private confabs with world leaders before that have raised red flags.

Early in his presidency, he met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Germany with only a Kremlin interpreter present. Last year, after Trump spent more than two hours talking with Putin in Helsinki, Finland, Democrats tried to subpoena Trump's translator to testify in Congress about what was said.

Republicans blocked it. The White House has never provided information on what Putin and Trump talked about. Even Trump's director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, said he didn't know.

"It is utterly amazing, utterly amazing, that no one knows what was said," Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said at the time.

Trump's translator in Wednesday's private chat was Yun-hyang Lee, the U.S. State Department's division chief for interpreting services, who also translated for the president at his first meeting with Kim last year in Singapore. The White House identified Kim's translator as Sin Hye Yong.

Some experts on past U.S.-North Korean diplomatic efforts worry the private sit-downs give Kim an opportunity to win concessions from Trump that working-level officials would have advised him not to offer.

Before the summit, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said he thought Kim requested the private meeting with hopes that he could "elicit concessions from President Trump that might not otherwise be possible if it was just our diplomats talking one-on-one."

Others think there's nothing wrong with the president's penchant for one-on-one meetings with world leaders.

"I don't find that they're nefarious," said retired Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis with the Defense Priorities think tank, which advocates against overusing military action to solve foreign policy challenges.

"I think he's just more comfortable doing it that way," Davis told reporters at a summit briefing.

Davis pointed to President Richard Nixon's many private confabs with Chinese leaders when he reopened relations with China in the 1970s.

Last year, at the Singapore summit, Trump caught U.S. ally South Korea off guard by announcing the suspension of major U.S. military exercises with the South. Trump critics said he squandered critical U.S. leverage before the North took any concrete steps toward denuclearization.

It was widely presumed that Trump made the decision during his private talks with Kim — his description of the war games as "very provocative" seemed to be in line with North Korea's view of the drills as rehearsals for invasions. Both Washington and Seoul have insisted for years that the exercises were routine and defensive in nature.

Bong Young-shik, an analyst at Seoul's Yonsei University, was less worried, saying that the criticism Trump faced in Singapore could make him less likely to make huge, impulsive decisions during his private meetings with Kim this time around.

"There's always a certain level of risk in this kind of meeting, but it's hard to say Trump will be dragged into a decision by Kim just because of what happened in Singapore," Bong said.

Former President Barack Obama was known to occasionally hold impromptu chats with leaders on the sidelines of major global summits with only their interpreters at their sides.

At former President Ronald Reagan's first meeting with then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva, Switzerland, in November 1985, the two men met alone with only trusted interpreters. Only 15 minutes had been allotted for the discussion, but it went on for an hour.

Associated Press writer Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

Follow all of AP's summit coverage at https://apnews.com/Trump-KimSummit</s>President Trump says opening US liaison office in North Korea is 'a good idea,' as Kim Jong Un calls it 'welcomable'

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — President Trump says opening US liaison office in North Korea is 'a good idea,' as Kim Jong Un calls it 'welcomable'
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un begins an official visit to Vietnam, three days after arriving in the country for a nuclear summit with U.S. President Donald Trump that ended in deadlock.