Trump admin weighs softening demands ahead of second North Korea summit

By Jim Sciutto, Kylie Atwood, Jeremy Diamond and Kevin Liptak, CNN
Updated 2003 GMT (0403 HKT) February 22, 2019

(CNN) — As President Donald Trump prepares to meet face-to-face with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un for a second time, his administration is weighing backing off an earlier demand that North Korea agree during the upcoming summit to make a full accounting of its nuclear and missile programs as a prerequisite for US concessions, multiple administration officials tell CNN.

The administration has been pressing North Korea since the two leaders' last summit in Singapore to provide information about its nuclear capabilities, suggesting such an accounting would be a necessary outcome of any second encounter between Trump and Kim.

As recently as November, Vice President Mike Pence called such a nuclear accounting an "imperative" at a second summit.

"I think it will be absolutely imperative in this next summit that we come away with a plan for identifying all of the weapons in question, identifying all the development sites, allowing for inspections of the sites and the plan for dismantling nuclear weapons," Pence said.

Now, administration officials describe such a declaration as a longer-term goal of the talks.

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