US President Donald Trump would \u201ccertainly be open\u201d to meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, he said in an interview broadcast Sunday as he began an extended Asian tour.<\/p>\n
Asked by journalist Sharyl Attkisson, host of the \u201cFull Measure\u201d TV show, whether he would \u201cever consider sitting down with the dictator,\u201d Trump said he was holding meetings with numerous Asian leaders.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would sit down with anybody,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s strength or weakness, I think sitting down with people is not a bad thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I would certainly be open to doing that but we\u2019ll see where it goes, I think we\u2019re far too early.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s conciliatory-sounding comment came after months of fiery rhetorical exchanges between the two leaders, prompted by a series of internationally condemned nuclear and missile tests by the North.<\/p>\n
The North has denounced Trump as a \u201cmentally deranged US dotard,\u201d or senile old man, and the country\u2019s ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun referred to him Sunday as \u201cinstable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump, for his part, has mocked Kim as \u201cLittle Rocket Man\u201d and has vowed to rain \u201cfire and fury\u201d down on the North if it threatens the US or its allies.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s latest comment appeared to be something of a reversal from a Twitter message he sent just over a month ago, in which he said that US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was \u201cwasting his time\u201d trying to negotiate with the North Korean leader.<\/p>\n
The war of words has been deeply unsettling for US allies in the region, which include Japan, where Trump met Sunday with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and South Korea, where he is to meet Tuesday with President Moon Jae-In.<\/p>\n
Trump then travels to China on Wednesday, Vietnam on Friday and the Philippines on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The interview was broadcast as a letter by the US defence department emerged that said the only way to locate and secure all North Korea\u2019s nuclear weapons sites would be via a US ground invasion.<\/p>\n
The two-page document was addressed to Ted W Lieu, a Democratic member of Congress in response to a request regarding \u201cexpected casualty assessments in a conflict with North Korea.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US President Donald Trump would \u201ccertainly be open\u201d to meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, he said in an interview broadcast Sunday as he began an extended Asian tour. Asked by journalist Sharyl Attkisson, host of the \u201cFull Measure\u201d TV show, whether he would \u201cever consider sitting down with the dictator,\u201d Trump said he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9478,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9479,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9477\/revisions\/9479"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}