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494515
Wed, 06/06/2018 - 10:53
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Separate meeting between Putin, Kim to be more fruitful than their Qingdao contacts

MOSCOW, June 6. /TASS/. A separate meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will be more fruitful than their contacts on the sidelines of the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization /SCO/, due in Qingdao, China, from June 8 through June 10, a leading Russian expert on eastern Asia told TASS on Tuesday. "Numerous speculations regarding a possibility of their bilateral meeting during the summit are afloat now," said Georgy Toloraya, the director of the Center for Russia’s Strategy in Asia at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. "Surely a logistic possibility of this kind exists, as Kim Jong-un may come to Qingdao and meet with Putin and a move like this on his part would become a powerful argument up his sleeve on the eve of his summit with Donald Trump in Singapore." "A meeting of this type wouldn’t be particularly advantageous for us because we’ll stay in China’s shadow somehow," Toloraya said. "Putin’s trip from Qingdao to Pyongyang to get acquainted with Kim Jong-un and exchange opinions with him would be a more profitable option, as Russia would reaffirm its role in the settling of the Korean Peninsula nuclear problem and its interestedness in peace and security guarantees for North Korea." Toloraya also did not rule out that Kim Jong-un’s trip to the 4th World Economic Forum in Vladivostok that will take place from September 11 through September 13 might be one more option for a meeting between the Russian and North Korean leaders. "Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed during his trip to Pyongyang on May 31 the North Korean leader had been invited to visit Russia and that he was viewing the prospects for his meeting [with Putin] positively," he said. "If this visit takes place, it can be timed for the World Economic Forum, and whether or not Kim Jong-un will take part in the forum personally is a different story." As he commented on the possible US-North Korean talks in Singapore, Toloraya said intensive negotiations between the sides were in full swing and constant meetings between the American and North Korean high-rank representatives made up a crucial stage of the effort to bring the positions of the sides closer to each other. "And the positions are such that it’s extremely difficult to bridge a gap between them," he said. "The US demands a full, veritable and irreversible nuclear disarmament from the DPRK, while the DPRK is avoiding the issue of attaining this final goal. Still it agrees to move forwards stage by stage." "The very meeting depends on how far the sides will manage to make their positions closer so that they would find this bridging satisfactory," Toloraya said. "So far, there are the grounds for hopes that the meeting will take place, indeed, and the sides will manage to stay away from a row at it, although the PR effect is a more substantial element of it than any practical agreements, which the sides will be working out behind closed doors for a long, long time." Read more

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