MIKE PENCE/NORTH KOREA/NUCLEAR/SUMMIT/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday [11-15-18] that the US will not require North Korea to provide a full list of its nuclear and missile sites before President Donald Trump meets with dictator Kim Jong Un for a second summit slated for early next year. Washington and Pyongyang have been locked in a diplomatic standoff for weeks over which side will make concessions first, but by relaxing its demands ahead of a second Trump-Kim summit, the US may have just blinked first. Rather than requiring a declaration of nuclear weapons sites as a prerequisite to a second meeting with Trump, Pence told NBC News that the administration will insist on developing a ‘verifiable plan’ to disclose those sites while the two leaders are in the same room. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Thursday that the Trump administration’s approach to dealing with North Korea will take time but bi-lateral engagement between the country’s two leaders may be more likely to bring results than multilateral attempts of the past where negotiations became ‘bogged down’ over disagreements where things ‘take a lot longer to get done.'”
–Zachary Cohen, “Pence drops key US demand for Trump-Kim summit,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, November 15, 2018 5:20 am