Donald Trump says North Korea summit with Kim Jong-un 'likely' to take place as planned, a day after cancelling it

Chaotic public utterings from White House continue as leader appears to contradict open letter he released 24 hours earlier

People walk past a television news screen showing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (JUNG YEON-JE/AFP/Getty Images)

Donald Trump has said a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was “likely” to go ahead, a day after he announced the summit was cancelled.

The president said in a tweet that Washington was having “productive talks” with Pyongyang about reinstating the meeting on 12 June in Singapore.

Mr Trump’s back-and-forth over the plan has given ammunition to critics who argue the administration is in chaos and caused anxiety to South Korea, which brokered the talks between Washington and North Korea.

A report by Politico claimed an advance team of 30 White House and State Department officials was preparing to leave for Singapore later this weekend.

Mr Trump said in a Twitter post late on Friday: “We are having very productive talks about reinstating the summit which, if it does happen, will likely remain in Singapore on the same date, June 12^th, and, if necessary, will be extended beyond that date.”

The leader had earlier indicated the summit could be salvaged after welcoming a conciliatory statement from North Korea saying it remained open to discussions.

“It was a very nice statement they put out,” Mr Trump told reporters at the White House. “We’ll see what happens – it could even be the 12^th.”

“We’re talking to them now. They very much want to do it. We’d like to do it."

Friday’s tweet, which further brightened prospects of the US-North Korean meeting, came just a day after Mr Trump cancelled it, citing Pyongyang’s “open hostility”.

Seoul was apparently caught off-guard by Mr Trump’s decision to cancel the Singapore meeting, with President Moon Jae-in saying the decision was “very regrettable". He urged the two nations to resolve their differences through “more direct and closer dialogue between their leaders”.

The nation expressed cautious relief about indications the meeting could go ahead. “We see it as fortunate that the embers of dialogue between North Korea and the United States weren’t fully extinguished and are coming alive again,” Seoul’s presidential spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom said in a statement. “We are carefully watching the developments.”

If the meeting takes place, it will be the first between a serving US president and a North Korean leader after years of tension over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.

Announcement of the meeting this month followed months of war threats and insults between the leaders over North Korea’s development of missiles capable of reaching the US.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report