RUSSIALINK: “Pyongyang says Kim, Lavrov agree on Russia-N. Korea summit” – Interfax

MOSCOW. June 1 (Interfax) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed at their meeting on Pyongyang to hold a bilateral summit in 2018, the North Korean state-run news agency KCNA said in a statement on Friday.

Kim “warmly welcomed the visit of Foreign Minister Lavrov and his party to the DPRK and had a friendly conversation with them,” the news agency said.

Kim and Lavrov agreed “to invigorate high-ranking visits, activate exchange and cooperation in different fields, and, especially, realize the meeting between the top leaders of the DPRK and Russia this year, marking the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries in a bid to continue to develop the strategic and traditional DPRK-Russia relations in the interests of both sides in line with requirement [sic] of a new era in the future, too,” it said.

The sides discussed the situation on the Korean Peninsula and in the region as a whole. The North Korean leader said that “the DPRK’s will for denuclearization of the Korean peninsula still remains unchanged and consistent and fixed and he hoped that the DPRK-U.S. relations and the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula will be solved on a stage-by-stage basis by founding a solution to meet the interests of each other,” the KCNA said.

In addition, Kim and Lavrov discussed “further expanding and developing the relations of political and economic cooperation between the two countries and closely cooperating with each other,” it said.

“Kim Jong Un expressed thanks to President Putin for sending his warm and fine personal letter and conveyed thanks to him,” the KCNA said.