Washington, April 20 (TNS): US President Donald Trump says that if his planned talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un are not fruitful he will “walk out”.
At a joint news conference, he and Japanese PM Shinzo Abe said maximum pressure must be maintained on North Korea over nuclear disarmament.
Mr Abe is at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for talks.
Earlier, Mr Trump confirmed that CIA Director Mike Pompeo had made a secret trip to North Korea to meet Mr Kim.
He said Mr Pompeo had forged a “good relationship” with Mr Kim – whom the US president was last year calling “little rocket man” – and that the meeting had gone “very smoothly”.
The visit marked the highest-level contact between the US and North Korea since 2000.
Trump is expected to hold a summit with Mr Kim by June. Details, including a location, are still being worked out.
Meanwhile, South Korean president Moon Jae-in is set to meet Mr Kim next week.
Speaking on Thursday, Mr Moon said North Korea had said it was ready for “complete denuclearisation”, and called for “bold imagination and creative solutions” to ensure the Koreas summit and the Trump-Kim summit would succeed.
President Trump said at the joint news conference that if he did not think the meeting would be successful he would not go, and if the meeting went ahead but was not productive, he would walk out.
“Our campaign of maximum pressure will continue until North Korea denuclearises,” he added.
Courtesy: BBC
