Trump 'will walk out' if North Korea talks not fruitful
Washington, April 19: US President Donald Trump has said that if his planned talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un are not fruitful he will "walk out", media reported.
He said this during a joint news conference with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the BBC reported.
Trump said 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 denuclearizes," he added.
Abe is at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for talks.
Earlier, Trump had confirmed that CIA Director Mike Pompeo had made a secret trip to North Korea to meet Kim over the easter weekend.
He said Pompeo had forged a "good relationship" with Kim -- whom he called the "little rocket man" in 2017. Trump said the Pompeo-Kim meeting had gone off "very smoothly".
The visit marked the highest-level contact between the US and North Korea since 2000.
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Hamas accepts cease-fire proposal for Gaza, but Israel's stance still uncertain
Jerusalem, May 6: Hamas announced Monday it has accepted an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal, but there was no immediate word from Israel, leaving it uncertain whether a deal had been sealed to bring a halt to the seven-month-long war in Gaza.
It was the first glimmer of hope that a deal might avert further bloodshed. Hours earlier, Israel ordered some 100,000 Palestinians to begin evacuating the southern Gaza town of Rafah, signalling that an attack was imminent. The United States and other key allies of Israel oppose an offensive on Rafah, where around 1.4 million Palestinians, more than half of Gaza's population, are sheltering.
An official familiar with Israeli thinking said Israeli officials were examining the proposal, but the plan approved by Hamas was not the framework Israel proposed.
An American official also said the US was still waiting to learn more about the Hamas position and whether it reflected an agreement to what had already been signed off on by Israel and international negotiators or something else. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity as a stance was still being formulated.
Details of the proposal have not been released. Touring the region last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had pressed Hamas to take the deal, and Egyptian officials said it called for a cease-fire of multiple stages starting with a limited hostage release and some Israeli troop pullbacks from Gaza. The two sides would also negotiate a “permanent calm” that would lead to a full hostage release and greater Israeli withdrawal, they said.
