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Spotlight: After signaling openness to meeting, Trump shows Kim Jong Un his bombers

Xinhua, May 3, 2017 Adjust font size:

U.S. bombers conducted drills with South Korean fighters amid tensions on the Korean Peninsula though President Donald Trump expressed willingness to meet the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) leader Kim Jong Un.

The DPRK on Tuesday called the drill an "extremely reckless move for nuclear war" on the peninsula, and China urged related parties to take their responsibilities and find a breakthrough to resume peace talks at an early date.

MILITARY GAME

Two B-1 Lancer supersonic bombers conducted joint exercises with several F-15K fighter jets of South Korea on Monday, before staging a separate drill with fighter jets from the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier, Yonhap news agency reported Tuesday.

The U.S. bombers reportedly departed from the U.S. Anderson air base in Guam and arrived at South Korea's east waters at about noon on Monday.

Then, the bombers flew to the west waters of South Korea to drop target-practice bombs at the training ground.

The DPRK called it a nuclear bomb dropping drill on targets of the DPRK, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.

The report said the drill was "one more military provocation" and "What merits serious attention is that such a military game is underway when Trump and other U.S. warmongers are crying out for making a preemptive nuclear strike at the DPRK day after day."

Tension has remained very high over the past two months between the United States and the DPRK over the former's threat to mount military attacks on Pyongyang for its nuclear and missile programs.

The United States and South Korea also held their largest ever joint military exercises in the past two months, while the USS Carl Vinson nuclear aircraft carrier task group arrived in the waters off the peninsula for joint drills with the South Korean military.

"MEET WITH HIM"

On Monday, Trump told Bloomberg that he would meet Kim "under the right circumstances."

"If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him, I would absolutely, I would be honored to do it," Trump said. "If it's under the, again, under the right circumstances. But I would do that."

However, the White House then said such a meeting is unlikely in the near future.

"We are so early into this process that I don't see this happening any time soon," said White House spokesman Sean Spicer at the daily briefing Tuesday, adding that conditions for such a meeting have not been met yet.

Commenting on Trump's openness to meet Kim, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said Tuesday that the United States and the DPRK, as parties directly concerned in the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, should make political decisions and take actions as soon as possible to ease tensions on the peninsula, restart peace talks, and realize denuclearization.

Geng said China always believes that peaceful negotiation and consultation remain the only practical and feasible approach to realizing denuclearization, peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.

In a phone conversation on Tuesday, Trump agreed with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to work jointly to reduce tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the Kremlin said. Endi