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North Korea is going to halt its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and it will also close down its nuclear test center, according to multiple reports Friday.
“From April 21, 2018, nuclear tests and intercontinental ballistic missile tests will be discontinued. North Korea’s nuclear test center will be discarded in order to ensure the transparency of the nuclear test suspension,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, RT reported.
The programs are going to be halted April 21.
BREAKING: North Korea says it will stop conducting nuclear tests and ICBM launches starting April 21 – state news agency KCNA pic.twitter.com/R4BlSXqkBF
— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) April 20, 2018
The Associated Press and Reuters were among the first agencies that confirmed the news.
BREAKING: North Korea will halt nuclear and ICBM tests and dismantle its testing site https://t.co/EMOCpt0yIv pic.twitter.com/Pfi5cNRjAw
— Bloomberg (@business) April 20, 2018
President Trump on Wednesday said he would cancel or even possibly walk out of an in-the-works upcoming summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un if the meeting doesn’t prove “fruitful.”
“If I think it’s a meeting that is not going to be fruitful, we’re not going to go,” Trump said during a press conference in Florida with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. “If the meeting, when I’m there, is not fruitful, I will respectfully leave the meeting.”
“I think we’re going to be successful,” Trump added. “But for any reason if I think we’re not, we end.”
The upcoming and highly anticipated summit would be the first time a sitting U.S. President has with a North Korean leader. There is not date or location for the meeting yet, although Trump said “five locations” are being considered, and that the historical meeting would take place sometime before May.
President Trump on Wednesday morning tweeted and confirmed that former CIA Director and nominee for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Kim Jong Un last week, and that the meeting went “very smoothly.”
Pompeo’s meeting was an unprecedented visit ahead of what is expected to be a huge and important meeting with Kim Jong Un and President Trump sometime before May.
Pompeo met with Kim to start laying the groundwork for that meeting.
President Trump on Tuesday had said the U.S. is talking directly with North Korea in anticipation of a summit sometime before May with Kim Jong Un, and that the talks are taking place at “extremely high levels.”
Trump also gave his “blessing” for North and South Korea to end their decades-long war that has been ongoing on the Korean Peninsula.
North and South Korea are reportedly going to agree to bring an end to the decades-long military conflict on the Korean Peninsula, a South Korean newspaper reported Tuesday.
The leaders of North and South Korea – Kim Jong Un and President Moon Jae-in, respectively – are slated to meet next week, on April 27, in advance of the tri-nation summit with President Trump sometime before May.
It was reported that the two nations are going to officially put an end to the Korean military conflict, which technically lasted from 1950 to 1953 but was ended with a truce, not a peace treaty, according to the South Korean newspaper Munhwa Ilbo, which cited an unnamed South Korean official.
