The North Korean state media on Monday said the summit between its leader Kim Jong-un and United States President Donald Trump could “establish a new relationship” with Washington, BBC reported.

The two leaders reached Singapore on June 10 ahead of their unprecedented meeting on Tuesday morning on the resort island of Sentosa.

North Korea’s state-run KCNA news agency said the two nations would discuss “wide-ranging and profound views” to reset relations, Reuters reported. It heralded the summit as part of a “changed era”.

Commenting on the agenda of the summit, the KCNA said that Trump and Kim would prioritise “the issue of building a permanent and durable peacekeeping mechanism on the Korean Peninsula, the issue of realising the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and other issues of mutual concern”.

United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington was “committed to the complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”.

Historic meeting

The meeting would be the first between a North Korean leader and a sitting US president. Since the Korean War in the 1950s, the leaders of the two countries have never met or even spoken on the phone, Reuters reported.

Trump and Kim will discuss the denuclearisation of North Korea and the formal end of the Korean War, for which no final peace treaty was signed.

The summit comes months after the tensions between the US and North Korea escalated after Pyongyang stepped up efforts to boost its nuclear weapons programme. The two leaders began to frequently trade ridicule, insults and threats against each other, and the United Nations strengthened sanctions against North Korea. In March, however, Trump accepted an invitation from Kim to meet him.

However, on May 24, the Trump administration cancelled the meeting citing hostility, but reversed its decision within days after North Korea said it was still open to dialogue with Washington.