President of the United States, Donald Trump, said in a tweet on
Sunday that North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un had insulted him by calling
him “old” and said he would never call Kim “short and fat”.
In one of a series of tweets after attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vietnam, Trump said: “Why
would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me ‘old,’ when I would NEVER
call him ‘short and fat?’ Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend – and
maybe someday that will happen!”
According to The Guardian UK, President Trump has been working to
rally global pressure against North Korea’s nuclear weapons program on
the trip to Asia.
In a stern speech delivered in South Korea’s National Assembly on Tuesday, he said: “Do
not underestimate us. And do not try us ... The weapons you’re
acquiring are not making you safer, they are putting your regime in
grave danger. Every step you take down this dark path increases the
peril you face.”
On Saturday, the North’s Foreign Ministry responded in a statement:
“Reckless remarks by an old lunatic like Trump will never scare us or
stop our advance. On the contrary, all this makes us more sure that our
choice to promote economic construction at the same time as building up
our nuclear force is all the more righteous, and it pushes us to speed
up the effort to complete our nuclear force.”
At a news conference in Vietnam on Sunday after his tweets, Trump
said it was possible he could be friends with Kim one day and that it
would be “very, very nice” but he was not sure that it would happen.
Asked if he could see himself being friends with Kim, Trump said: “That
might be a strange thing to happen but it’s a possibility. If it did
happen it could be a good thing, I can tell you, for North Korea, but it
could also be good for a lot of other places and be good for the rest
the world. It could be something that could happen. I don’t know if it
will but it would be very, very nice.”
Trump has traded insults and threats with Kim in the past amid
escalating tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs. North
Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear bomb test on
September 3, prompting another round of UN sanctions.
In the series of tweets, Trump also said the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, was “upping sanctions” on North Korea in response to its nuclear and missile programs and that Xi wants Pyongyang to “denuclearize”.
During Trump’s visit to Beijing last week, Xi reiterated that China
would strive for the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula but
offered no hint that China would change tack on North Korea, with which
it fought side by side in the 1950-53 Korean war against US-led forces.
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