The World Council of Churches has welcomed recent initiatives to establish meaningful and constructive dialogue between the United States of America and North Korea.

The WCC on April 20 cited reports of Central Intelligence Director Mike Pompeo's meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

"it is apparent that a new openness to constructive engagement has for the time being replaced the dangerously escalating rhetoric between the two nations, said WCC general secretary Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit.

"This is a very positive sign and important foundation for the planned US-North Korean summit at the beginning of June or end of May," he said.

He said the WCC especially welcomes the expressed support given by President Donald Trump for the two Koreas to discuss the end of the war during their own summit meeting."

The WCC and its partners in both South and North Korea have repeatedly and consistently called for a peace treaty to replace the Armistice Agreement of 1953.

There is a need to definitively conclude the suspended state of war on the Korean Peninsula and to enable the current challenges to peaceful coexistence in the region to be addressed more clearly and pragmatically.

"We are gratified and encouraged that the possibility and utility of this long-overdue step is finally being recognized by the most important parties to this tragic unresolved conflict, which has poisoned relations in the region for so long," said Tveit.

The WCC invited all Christians and people of good will around the world to support all efforts to ease tensions, to sustain hope and to promote peaceful coexistence on the Korean peninsula.