Iran's Zarif plans North Korea visit: state TV

Iranian foreign minister says the date of the trip will be set and announced soon

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is planning to visit North Korea, Iran's state television reported on Sunday, without giving the date of the visit.

"The date of this trip will be set and announced soon," the
television quoted Zarif as saying. It gave no further details.

North Korea's top diplomat, Ri Yong Ho, whose country faces
international and US sanctions, visited Iran in August last year as the
United States reintroduced sanctions against Tehran.

Ri's trip was the first by a senior North Korean official since the re-election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in 2017. It also came after US President Donald Trump's June meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore.

After the visit, the North Korean foreign minister said he had briefed Rouhani on the nuclear negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington.

Zarif's announcement of a visit to North Korea comes days after Kim Jong Un accused the US of acting in “bad faith” in talks on its nuclear arsenal.

The comment was reported by North Korean state media on Friday as Kim left Russia following his first summit with President Vladimir Putin.

The talks saw Putin back the North’s need for “security guarantees” in its standoff with the United States.

The official Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim told Putin the US had adopted a “unilateral attitude in bad faith” at a summit with US President Donald Trump two months ago in Hanoi.