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Sweden ready to host US-North Korea meet: PM

TT/The Local
TT/The Local - [email protected]
Sweden ready to host US-North Korea meet: PM
President Donald Trump agreed on Thursday to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Photo: TT

Sweden is ready and willing to host a historic meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said on Saturday.

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“If we can help in any way, we will do it,” Löfven said at a press conference after meeting Luxembourg's Prime Minister Xavier Bettel. 
 
Sweden and Switzerland are the two main hosts that have been floated for the meeting announced by Trump last week, although the de-militarised zone between North and South Korea and Mongolia have also been mooted. 
 
In an interview with Sweden's TT newswire, Löfven pointed to his country’s role as a "protecting power” for the US in North Korea, an arrangement which enables US diplomats to use Sweden’s Pyongyang embassy as a base and conduit for communicating with the closed dictatorship. 
 
“I don’t want to speculate too much about what that might mean,” Löfven said of the help Sweden was willing to give, in an interview with Sweden's TT newswire. 
 
“But the fact that we are a protecting power for the US, 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.” 
 
Sweden has been named as a possible venue for the meeting by the US's Washington Post newspaper, broadcaster ABC News, and others. 
 
But Löfven stressed that Sweden was not a power player in North Korea, who had significant influence over either the North or the South. 
 
“One must remember that the key actors remain North and South Korea, the USA and China,” he said. “It is they who essentially must find a way forward.” 
 

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