US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says there is a "real opportunity" for a deal when President Trump meets the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Interviewed by ABC News, he said North Korea must take "irreversible" steps to get rid of its nuclear arms programme.

Mr Pompeo met Mr Kim secretly in Pyongyang earlier this month as CIA director. Details only emerged later.

Mr Trump is expected to meet the North Korean leader next month to discuss denuclearising the Korean peninsula.

Mr Pompeo said Mr Trump had clearly told him to raise the issue of a verifiable mechanism to make sure North Korea does denuclearise. He also raised the topic of US citizens held by the North Koreans.

Separately, new US National Security Advisor John Bolton told Fox News that an agreement with Libya on eliminating its weapons of mass destruction programme could serve as a model for a North Korea deal.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi agreed with Western powers in 2003 to dismantle his programme in return for the lifting of sanctions.

"There are obviously differences. The Libyan programme was much smaller, but that was basically the agreement that we made," Mr Bolton said.

What has been happening on the ground?

South Korea has said that North Korea's main nuclear testing site - Punggye-ri - is to close.

Presidential spokesman Yoon Young-chan said that Mr Kim had stated he "would carry out the closing of the nuclear test site in May".

Experts from South Korea and the US would be invited to witness it. North Korea has so far made no public comments on the issue.

Chinese scientists have said the site may have partially collapsed last September.

On Friday, Mr Kim and South Korea's President Moon Jae-in agreed at an historic summit to work on denuclearisation. The meeting followed months of warlike rhetoric from the North.

What is known about the test site?

Situated in mountainous terrain in the north-east, it is thought to be the North's main nuclear facility.

The nuclear tests have taken place in a system of tunnels dug below Mount Mantap, near the Punggye-ri site.

Six nuclear tests have been carried out there since 2006.

After the last, in September 2017, a series of aftershocks hit the site, which seismologists believe collapsed part of the mountain's interior.

Mr Kim made an apparent reference to these reports, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

"Some say that we are terminating facilities that are not functioning, but you will see that they are in good condition," the North Korean leader was quoted as saying by Mr Yoon on Sunday.

The information about the nuclear site has been gathered mainly from satellite imagery and tracking the movement of equipment at the location.

Source:
courtesy of BBC NEWS

by BBC NEWS

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