Trump to meet Kim Jong-un soon, but will leave summit if talks are not 'fruitful'

US President Donald Trump has said that he is to meet the North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-un, “in the coming weeks” but warned that he was prepared to walk out if the talks were not “fruitful”.

“As you know, I will be meeting with Kim Jong-un in the coming weeks to discuss the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula,” the US president told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. “Hopefully that meeting will be a great success and we’re looking forward to it.”

At a joint news conference, he and Japanese PM Shinzo Abe said maximum pressure must be maintained on North Korea over nuclear disarmament.

Trump also said the US was “fighting very diligently” to win freedom for three Americans detained in North Korea. He said he believed there was a “good chance of doing it” and that “we’re having a good dialogue” with the North Koreans.

Earlier, Trump confirmed that CIA Director Mike Pompeo had made a secret trip to North Korea to meet Kim.

He said Pompeo had forged a "good relationship" with Kim - whom the US president was last year calling "little rocket man" - and that the meeting had gone "very smoothly".

The visit marked the highest-level contact between the US and North Korea since 2000.

Speaking at the joint press conference, the president said: “We’ve never been in a position like this with that regime, whether it’s father, grandfather or son, and I hope to have a very successful meeting. If we don’t think it’s going to be successful, we won’t have it, we won’t have it. If I think that it’s a meeting that is not going to be fruitful, we’re not going to go.

Trump said the US remained opposed to rejoining the Trans Pacific Partnership unless Japan and other parties to the trade pact offered "a deal that I can't refuse".