MOSCOW – US President Donald Trump expressed his hope in an interview with the TMJ4-TV broadcaster that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wants to maintain peace on the Korean peninsula.
“Hopefully, he [Kim Jong Un] wants peace and we want peace. And that’s gonna be the end determination. We gonna have to see what happens,” Trump said.He pointed that one should be always concerned about the threat of nuclear war with North Korea.
“You always have to be concerned, you don’t know exactly, who you are dealing with,” the president said answering the question whether the US citizens should be concerned about the potential war.
Trump also positively assessed his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, held earlier this month, saying that China has an opportunity to exert influence on North Korea.
“I had a great, great meeting with the president of China and that meeting tells me a lot and you see a lot of things happen. They have a pretty good power, not a great power perhaps, but a pretty good power over north Korea,” he said.
The US leader also said that the previous country's presidents should have solved the problem of the North Korean nuclear program.
“Now I am a put in a position where he [Kim Jong Un] actually has nuclear [weapons] and we gonna have to do something about that,” Trump added.
The statement was made amid escalation of tensions on the Korean peninsula with South Korean and US military having reported on April 16, that they had registered what they believed to be a failed missile test by Pyongyang.
On April 14, US media reported that Trump might order a strike against North Korea if Pyongyang decided to carry out another nuclear weapon test.
In response, the general staff of the North Korean armed forces threatened to launch a strike against US military bases in Japan and South Korea, as well as the presidential residence in Seoul in case of US aggression.
