North Korea willing to discuss wind down of nuclear weapons programme

North Korea has informed the United States that it is prepared to discuss denuclearisation when the country’s leader Kim Jong-un meets President Trump, a US official said on Sunday.

Pyongyang has reportedly offered these assurances to South Korean officials who have brokered the talks between the two nations, but Sunday’s reports represented the first time that any such pledges had been made to Washington directly.

It is understood that intelligence officials from North Korea and the US have spoken on multiple occasions to discuss the upcoming meeting.

In an unprecedented move, which US officials say is being planned for May, for the first time ever, a sitting US president will meet with the leader of the Hermit Kingdom.

That followed a period of brinkmanship between the two heads of state, with the choicest altercation seeing Trump refer to Kim as "little rocket man" while the North Korean leader branded Trump a "dotard".

Significantly as well, the news follows the tightening of sanctions against North Korea from its key ally China.

At the weekend, Beijing banned the export to North Korea of 32 items that could be used in the development of weapons of mass destruction, in line with a UN Security Council resolution penned in September.

China is the country's top trade partner but Chinese exports to North Korea dropped 32.4% in February compared to the previous year, while imports from North Korea fell by 94.7%, as China responded to pressure from the Trump administration to curb economic activity with Pyongyang.

In his first foreign trip since taking office in 2011, Kim visited Beijing in late March and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping for what China’s Xinhua news agency dubbed as "successful talks".