Nuclear security

US academics and former senior officials met North Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator in Singapore on Sunday, to get a feel for each other’s positions amid a years-long standoff over the North’s nuclear weapons buildup.

Leon Sigal, director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council, a US-based nonprofit, told reporters the meeting would cover the North’s nuclear missile programmes. He said “it’s two ways of taking each other’s temperature”.

The US and North Korea have no formal diplomatic ties, but former US officials occasionally meet the North’s diplomats in a bid to settle the impasse over Pyongyang’s pursuit of a long-range nuclear-armed missile that could hit the US mainland.

North Korea nuclear chief meets with US negotiators amid standoff