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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US VP JD Vance says Lebanon not part of ceasefire, calls it ‘misunderstanding’
Budapest/Washington: US Vice President J D Vance has said that Lebanon was never included in the ceasefire understanding with Iran, describing the confusion as a “legitimate misunderstanding”.
Speaking to reporters before departing from Hungary, Vance said, “I think the Iranians thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon and it just didn’t. We never made that promise.”
He stressed that the United States had not included Lebanon in the scope of the ceasefire at any stage.
His remarks come amid continued Israeli strikes in Lebanon, where more than 200 people were reported killed, even as ceasefire talks between Iran and the US move forward.
Vance said Israel had “offered … to check themselves a little bit in Lebanon because they want to make sure that our negotiation is successful”.
He warned that if Iran allows the situation in Lebanon to affect the negotiations, it could derail the talks.
“If Iran wants to let this negotiation fall apart in a conflict where they were getting hammered over Lebanon, which has nothing to do with them and which the United States never once said was part of the ceasefire, that’s ultimately their choice,” he said.
