United States President Donald Trump will travel to Asia in November, touring China, Vietnam, South Korea, Philippines and Japan, a White House statement said on Friday. Though Trump will not visit India, he could meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit in Manila, the Hindustan Times reported.
Trump will address the issue of North Korea during his visit from November 4 to 15. “The president’s engagements will strengthen the international resolve to confront the North Korean threat and ensure the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula,” the White House said in its statement. Trump is likely to seek to convince North Korea’s neighbours, including China, on continuing sanctions against the country in the wake of its nuclear programme, the BBC reported.
The war of words between Trump and North Korea has heated up in recent months, particularly after Pyongyang conducted its sixth nuclear test this year. In a speech at the United Nations on September 19, Trump had vowed that the US would “totally destroy North Korea”. North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho on September 25 had said that Washington had declared a war on Pyongyang, a claim dismissed by the United States.
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