May vow to shut N-sites

NORTH Korea had promised to close its atomic test site next month and invite US weapons experts to the country, Seoul said yesterday, as US President Donald Trump expressed optimism about a nuclear deal with the secretive regime.

The reported pledge from North leader Kim Jong Un came as he and South Korean President Moon Jae-in agreed to pursue the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula during their summit on Friday.

“Kim said during the summit with President Moon that he would carry out the closing of the nuclear test site in May, and would soon invite experts of South Korea and the US as well as journalists to disclose the process to the international community with transparency,” Seoul spokesman Yoon Young-chan said.

“Kim said, ‘The US feels repulsive about us, but once we talk, they will realise that I am not a person who will fire a nuclear weapon to the South or the US or target the US’.”

The remarks are likely to be seen as a sweetener ahead of Mr Trump’s own summit with Mr Kim, which the US leader said would take place “in the next three or four weeks”.

Mr Trump vowed to do “the world a big favour” by achieving a nuclear deal with the regime.

He has been eager to play up his role in a breakthrough with Pyongyang through what the White House has called a “maximum pressure campaign” consisting of tough rhetoric, strengthened global sanctions and diplomatic efforts to further isolate the authoritarian regime.

“If we would have said where we are today from three or four months — months ago, do you remember what they were saying? ‘He’s going to get us into nuclear war’, they said,” Mr Trump said.

But he also said he was prepared to walk away if US demands for North Korea to relinquish its atomic arsenal were not met.