Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have held a telephone conversation to discuss the situation in the North Korean Peninsula and agreed on tight cooperation over the issue of denuclearization of North Korea, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said on Monday, TASS reports.
"Amid preparations for the forthcoming summit meetings between the South and the North, and also between the North and the United States, the leaders of the two countries agreed on tight cooperation aimed at denuclearization of North Korea," the Japanese Foreign Ministry said in a news release obtained by TASS.
On March 8 the chief of the South Korean presidential National Security Office told the media in Washington US President Donald Trump was prepared to meet with Kim Jong-un by May 2018.
White House spokesman Sarah Sanders said Trump would accept an invitation to meet with the North Korean leader "at a place and time to be determined." However, on March 9 she said that a Trump-Kim meeting would not take place until Pyongyang took measures to curtail its nuclear program.
South Korea’s Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha told CBS in an interview that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had "given his word" in a commitment toward eventual denuclearization.