Mongolia could end up as the winner of the competition to host President Trump and Kim Jong-un's historic sit down.

It is one of the only countries that's been floated that is within easy traveling distance for Kim and would serve as neutral territory for both leaders.

Kim is likely be confined to a 2,000 mile radius, The New York Times reported. His Soviet-era plane may not be able to fly further than that without stopping to refuel, the publication reported.

The North Korean dictator's aging private jet, an IL-62, has a factory specified range of 10,000 km, or 6,215 miles - but experts said it was unclear it could actually go that far safely.

'The idea that their aircraft are all very short range things is just inaccurate,' Dean Cheng, the senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation's Asian Studies Center, told DailyMail.com.

Cheng pointed out that North Korea is also in possession of two Tupolev Tu-204 planes that have ranges of up to 3,600 miles. The Tu-204 was manufactured to compete with and is similar in make to the Boeing 757.

Whether Kim's plane will be able to fly thousands of miles safely or reliably, or the North Korea leader wants to make a long-distance flight, Cheng said, is another matter.

'At the end of the day I think the real question is going to be, and we don't have visibility into this, what are the constraints that Kim Jong-un has chosen to impose?' Cheng said. 'That more than anything else will probably be the deciding factor, after which is: we're not going to Pyongyang.'

Given the expected restraints on Kim's travel, Ulaanbaatar has emerged as a front-runner to host the summit that the U.S. government says is likely to take place in the next six weeks.

Ulaanbaatar has hosted talks between Japanese officials and the North Korean government on more than one occasion before.

Mongolia's former president, Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, made note of those talks in a March tweet inviting Trump and Kim to his nation's capital city.

'A long waited breakthrough! Here is an offer: US President Trump and NK leader Kim meet in UB,' he said. 'Mongolia is the most suitable, neutral territory. We facilitated important meetings, including between Japan and NK.'

Kim's only known trip off the Korean Peninsula since he became North Korea's Supreme leader in 2011 was a March visit to Beijing.

He arrived in China by train, another mode of transportation he could utilize.

In November, Trump landed in Beijing to great fanfare. For days, he bragged about the red carpet roll out he received at both the airport and at an event the following day at The Great Hall of the People.

But Beijing is politically tricky location for Trump to travel to at the moment. He'll be under pressure if he goes there to negotiate with Chinese President Xi Jingping, as well. China and the United States are currently in a face-off over tariffs that analysts worry is the start of a trade war.

Trump shed some light this week on the locations that are under consideration for the conference with Kim during two days of talks with the Japanese government in Florida.

The president said five locations are being reviewed, and none of them are in the United States.

It is unthinkable that Trump would travel to Pyongyang to speak with Kim, a brutal dictator who's illicit nuclear and ballistic missile tests are what prompted the summit.

Panmunjom, a city inside the Demilitarized Zone between the North and the South, remains a possibility, though. It will serve as the site for a similar chat next Friday between Kim and Moon Jae-in, the president of South Korea.

Assuming Kim could leave Asia, four cities in Europe were also thought to be on the table.

Geneva, Switzerland famously hosted a 1985 rendezvous between former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev and United States President Ronald Reagan.

Kim went to boarding school in Switzerland under a fake name and is familiar with the terrain.

Sweden has directly offered to facilitate talks with North Korea, suggesting Stockholm is under review.

The European nation acts as the 'protecting' power for the U.S. in North Korea, and North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho visited the country in March.

Two other Nordic nations are thought to be dark horses for the summit: Finland and Norway.

Choe Kang Il, an official with North Korea’s foreign ministry, visited Helsinki in Finland March by way of Beijing.

Oslo is Norway is the location where U.S. and North Korean leaders convened in May of 2017 to negotiate the release of the American student Otto Warmbier.

He returned to the U.S. in a coma and died just after his release.

'North Korea is remarkably opaque. We don't know what places he would consider acceptable,' Cheng said of the short-list.

'I look forward to meeting with Kim Jong-un. And hopefully that will be a success. And maybe it will be, and maybe it won’t be. We don’t know,' Trump said. 'But I can say this: They do respect us. We are respectful of them. And we’re going to see what happens.'

The president said that talks between the U.S. and North Korea had already taken place at 'extremely high levels,' a comment that was later revealed to be a reference to CIA Director Mike Pompeo's clandestine trip to Pyongyang to meet with Kim in early April.

Trump threatened Wednesday not to attend the talks if they did not seem they would be 'fruitful' toward achieving the end goal of North Korean denuclearization, although he remains hopeful the meeting will occur and that it will be 'very successful.'

'If I think that it's a meeting that is not going to be fruitful, we're not going to go,' he asserted. 'If the meeting when I'm there is not fruitful, I will respectfully leave the meeting, and will continue what we're doing or whatever it is that will continue,' he added.

Either way, Trump said, 'something will happen. So I like always remaining flexible, and will remain flexible here.'

Published Date:2018-04-20