Hanoi, Vietnam – Leaders of the United States and North Korea have arrived in the Vietnamese capital for their second round of talks in less than a year.

US President Donald Trump is seeking a continuation of the pause of Pyongyang’s weapons testing while Kim Jong Un wants easing of sanctions and a formal declaration ending the Korean War.

Kim was the first to arrive in Hanoi on Tuesday, completing the last part of his trip to the city by car after covering the three-day, 3,000-km journey from Pyongyang to Dong Dang at the Vietnam-China border via train.

Expectant crowds, lining the cordoned off streets of Hanoi where Kim’s motorcade was to pass, waited in overcast conditions to welcome the North Korean leader.

The city has been decorated with the flags of the US, North Korea and Vietnam, as well as banners showcasing faces of the two leaders and a “message of peace”.

Trump, who landed in Hanoi at about 9pm local time (14:00 GMT), is seeking an assurance from North Korea that it will stop testing its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

It also wants Pyongyang to get rid of all weapons capable of mass destruction, as well as produce a roadmap and a concrete plan of action on how it sets about achieving that goal.

Trump and Kim’s first historic Singapore summit last June came after months of growing tensions marked by nuclear and missile tests, fresh sanctions and threats of “total destruction” and ended with a vague statement that has failed to produce tangible progress.

Following the meeting, Trump revealed that complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula was the end goal.

However, the meeting did not explicitly define denuclearisation – leading to disagreements over what it means – nor did it detail a specific timeline for the destruction of North Korea’s nuclear weapons arsenal.

There is now a concern that a repeat of vague results will not be taken well this time around.

“A second summit with no outcome will be highly criticised, especially in the US and especially when Trump is in a state of domestic turmoil,” Jenny Town, a research analyst at the Simpson Center, told Al Jazeera.

“That outcome won’t be popular in North Korea either as they have gone out of the way to build a narrative domestically about denuclearization and turning towards economy and expecting certain benefits.”

Wednesday agenda

On Wednesday, Trump will be meeting Vietnam’s President and Secretary-General of the Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong as well as the country’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

Trump and Kim, meanwhile, are scheduled to have dinner on Wednesday with a formal meeting set to take place on Thursday, White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders told reporters.

The venue for Thursday’s meeting is yet to be revealed.

While Pyongyang is seeking an easing of the sanctions, experts have warned the US against offering North Korea relief if the country does not do more than in previous agreements.

“North Korea will get the approval to end the war in exchange for better agreements with the US than what were shared in Singapore,” Bong Young-Shik, a North Korea expert at the Yonsei University in Seoul, told Al Jazeera.

“If Pyongyang doesn’t do that, like dismantling the nuclear facilities, there’s no reason for the US to offer more concessions to the North. At the same time, if the North is about to agree to take corresponding measures that the US wants, it will ask for more than the official declaration to end the war.”

Additional reporting by Al Jazeera’s James Bays

Many Algerians believed that the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) party knew better than to field a wheelchair-bound and severely ill candidate for the country’s upcoming presidential election.

Despite suffering a debilitating stroke in 2013, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika had been re-elected for a fourth term in office a year later. 

The unraveling chaos in neighbouring Libya as well as Syria convinced a significant number of people that contesting the decision of the various clans that make up the Algerian state just wasn’t worth it. 

But when the FLN announced on February 10 that the incapacitated and largely absent president who is 81 would seek another five-year term in the April 18 vote, Algerians wouldn’t have it. 

Tens of thousands of demonstrators in cities across the country took the streets on Friday to make their frustration known. 

Chanting slogans against the president and his brother Said, who opponents suspect has been running the country from behind the scenes, they demanded Bouteflika withdraw his candidacy for the top job.

In his first statement since the protests broke out, Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia said Algerians would have the final say on who their next president will be. 

“Everyone has the right to support their candidate and be against any other candidate, the ballot box will decide in a peaceful and civilised way,” he said in a televised address in parliament on Monday. 

Amid the ongoing turmoil, Al Jazeera spoke to Soufiane Djilali, president of the opposition Jil Jadid party, about the protests and where things were headed. 

Al Jazeera: Bouteflika’s been ill for more than five years. Why is that it is only now that we are seeing all these protests?

Sofiane Djilali: It’s clear that for many years, when the economy was doing well, the government had managed to keep the peace by distributing a lot of money.

And Algerians who had just come out of a long period of civil war [1991 – 2002] did not want to go back to contestation.

That said, they knew that there were grave anomalies in the way the country was being run. Since 2014, the president’s health has only gotten worse and a drop in the price of oil led to a rupture in the social contract.

The contract was such that the government could do what it wished as long as it gave a bare minimum to Algerians.

With this contract now coming to an end, Algerians felt liberated and pressure began to mount on authorities.

The opposition’s work, our work, has sought to expose these anomalies. But the announcement of the fifth mandate was the spark that ignited the popular mobilisation that we are seeing today.

Many Algerians did not believe in the fifth term, and for good reason, they thought it was pure folly. The president cannot talk, can’t move, cannot run the country and everybody understood that hidden forces were using the president’s image.

Al Jazeera: Do Algerians want to get rid of Bouteflika or do they want a complete overhaul of the system?

Djilali: In the past, Algerians more or less tolerated Bouteflika but opposed the system. It is now clear that a crushing majority of Algerians want Bouteflika and the regime to go away.

Of course, they don’t want to get rid of the state and want to avoid a security vacuum. But there’s no doubt that they don’t want the current political system to stay in place.

Who is running the country is a question that is preoccupying the minds of Algerians. There is talk of the president’s family, hence the feeling among many that the republic is being turned into a monarchy.

This also explains the many slogans denouncing the president as Moroccan. That isn’t meant as an insult, but is a way of saying to Bouteflika that Algeria is not a kingdom.

Beyond the president’s family, there are other circles of influence that includes businessmen like Ali Haddad and Mahieddine Tahkout.

Al Jazeera: Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia said that the ballot would be the only way to bring about change. How do you feel about that?

Djilali: We would have been happy to take part in a free and fair election. The problem is that this is not the case in Algeria.

What we have are designations that are passed off as elections. This is why more than 80 percent of Algerians don’t vote in elections.

Elections are an elaborate accessory because the results are predetermined.

There’s a quota of representatives for each party at the popular assembly and the president is appointed.

Moreover, the 1996 constitution limits presidential terms to two. Bouteflika changed the constitution in 2008 to remove term limits without consulting the people.

In 2016, he reinstated term limits but what’s incredible is that he thinks that term limits do not apply to him. He wants a fifth term whereas the constitution clearly prohibits it.

Algeria’s electoral law additionally requires a medical certificate attesting that a candidate is fit for office.

We don’t understand how he passed the medical aptitude test in 2014 nor how he’s planning to do it in 2019, so it seems like the constitution doesn’t apply to Bouteflika. He is above the law and above the state.

Al Jazeera: Algeria’s stability for the region is very important. What makes you think the opposition will be up to the task of running the country?

Djilali: This discourse is typical of the Algerian regime and foreign countries that profit from the current system. Look no further than the protests that were held in cities across the country and abroad.

Look at the protest that was staged in Paris and that Mouwatana – an opposition movement made up of various political parties – had called for. This is proof that Algerians answered the opposition’s call.

How can we say the opposition is weak when people are so responsive to it. This election with Bouteflika is already biased and the opposition has threatened to withdraw from the vote.

If Bouteflika falls, it is his entire regime that must go with him, at which point we would have to go through a short transition period.

This is when the rules of the game will change to allow for real elections to take place.

This interview was edited for clairty and brevity. 

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A UN pledging conference for Yemen has raised about $2.6bn of the $4bn needed to address the humanitarian crisis in the country, where about 80,000 children below the age of five have already died of hunger, UN officials said on Tuesday.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were the main donors, pledging $500m each and contributing to a 30-percent increase of total pledges from last year.

But the two Gulf countries, backed by the United States and the United Kingdom, are also an active part in the ongoing conflict, which has caused what the UN describes as the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis”.

Since 2015, a Saudi-led coalition has been carrying out air strikes against the Houthi rebels in Yemen to restore the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The Houthis have seized control of the capital Sanaa, the Hodeidah port and most of the north eastern part of the country.

The war has caused a humanitarian emergency of catastrophic proportion, according to the UN, especially due to the almost total disregard for international humanitarian law by both parties.

Nevertheless, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday praised the Gulf countries’ contributions and abstained from any criticism of their role, despite insistent requests from the media to clarify the contradiction in their position as donors as well as parties in the conflict.

“This is a pledging conference and any contribution is welcome despite a country’s role in the war,” he said.

Asked to comment on the ongoing UN investigations for war crimes allegedly committed by all parties in the conflict, Guterres said they will continue as expected.

Humanitarian catastrophe

About 24 million people, 80 percent of the population, need humanitarian aid and protection, UN officials said at the conference.

About 20 million people cannot feed themselves reliably, out of which about 10 million Yemenis are just one step away from famine, according to UN figures.

Since last year, due to the continued fighting and a collapsing economy, an additional two million people fell into the humanitarian crisis.

The worst affected by the conflict are the children. About 80,000 children below the age of five have already died of starvation, according to a report quoted by Guterres.

Eight children a day are being killed as they go to school or play outdoors and from other conflict related causes, according to UNICEF.

About 360,000 children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition with life threatening consequences.

According to Geert Cappelaere, UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, every ten minutes in Yemen a child is dying of a preventable disease because of the lack of essential health services. More than two million children not being able to go to school.

“Today Yemen is the worst place on earth for a child,” Cappelaere told Al Jazeera. “I invite the parties to think of their own children when they sit at the negotiating table next time.”

Stockholm Agreement

Addressing the media on Monday, Guterres admitted that the humanitarian response cannot suffice to address the Yemeni crisis without the parties’ serious engagement in the peace negotiations.

“There cannot be a humanitarian solution to humanitarian problems,” he said.

The UN chief admitted that the implementation of the agreement reached between the Yemeni Government and the Houthis in December was meeting “obstacles”.

The UN-brokered Stockholm Agreement signed in December 2018 and Security Council resolution 2451 endorsing that agreement, called for a ceasefire in the Hodeidah governorate and a mechanism for exchanging prisoners amongst other confidence building measures.

However, little progress has been achieved since the parties met in Sweden with the each repeatedly accusing each other of not abiding by the agreement.

While violence in Hodeidah has diminished, the conflict continues or has escalated in some areas like Hajjah, while the humanitarian crisis remains catastrophic.

Out of 10 million on the verge of famine, nearly 240,000 of those people are right now facing catastrophic levels of hunger.

Almost 20 million people lack access to adequate healthcare, and nearly 18 million don’t have enough clean water or access to adequate sanitation.

More than three million people – including two million children – are acutely malnourished.

About 3.3 million remain displaced from their homes, including 685,000 who have fled fighting along the west coast since June 2018.

Amidst the conflict the economy continues to unravel. The exchange rate is about 600 Yemeni Rial to a US dollar – from about 400, which was the level it recovered to following substantial injections of foreign exchange into the Central Bank by Saudi Arabia in late 2018.

As the rate falls, the price of food for ordinary people rises.

Response Plan

The Humanitarian Response Plan for 2019 requires about $4bn to reach 15 million across the country.

The pledges made in Geneva will go towards increasing the number of people reached with emergency food aid to 12 million every month, from the 10 million of December last year, amongst other essential health and assistance plans.

According to Mark Lowcock, under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, donations made last year were divided amongst 200 agencies that reached people in all of Yemen’s 333 governorates.

But the UN operations also met with delays and blockades due to restrictions imposed on humanitarian workers and convoys by both parties in the conflict.

In particular, the blockade of the Hodeidah port which alone normally handles 70 percent of food imports entering Yemen and a lifeline for the entire population, has had disastrous consequences so far.

Access to mills  

Guterres on Tuesday also announced the UN had regained access to a stocking facility that can potentially feed some 3.7 million people for up to one month.

“We have a good news, we have access to the Red Sea Mills again,” said Guterres.

That was later confirmed by Herve Verhoosel, World Food Programme senior spokesperson.

“I can confirm that the WFP assessment team has gained access today to the Red Sea Mills for the first time since September 2018 when they were cut off by fighting in the area,” said Verhoosel.

At that time there were 51,000 metric tons of wheat in storage at the mills, which is enough to feed 3.7 million people for one month, and represents a quarter of WFP’s wheat flour milling capacity in the country.

Image: DAMIEN MEYER/AFP/Getty Images