US President Donald Trump WASHINGTON, May 22 (Agencies): US President Donald Trump urged China on Monday to maintain a secure border with North Korea, pressing Beijing ahead of his anticipated meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un next month aimed at denuclearisation.
"China must continue to be strong & tight on the Border of North Korea until a deal is made. The word is that recently the Border has become much more porous and more has been filtering in. I want this to happen, and North Korea to be VERY successful, but only after signing!" Trump tweeted.
He did not elaborate on the significance of the North Korea-China border issue in any deal that might be reached on denuclearisation. Trump has said his meeting with Kim will take place on June 12 in Singapore.
China is North Korea's most important trading partner and it has consistently said it is fully enforcing UN sanctions against the North.
Speaking in Beijing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said China had always fulfilled its international obligations, but that as friendly neighbors they, of course, had what he termed normal trading ties.
"There is absolutely no inevitable contradiction between these two," Lu told reporters.
North Korea last week threatened to scrap the summit with Trump if Washington continued to press for unilateral denuclearisation.
In response, Trump said that as far as he knew, the meeting was still on track and sought to placate Kim by saying the North Korean leader would be protected as part of any deal.
Last week, Trump told reporters at the White House that the Kim was possibly being influenced by China after two recent visits he made there.
Meanwhile, foreign journalists headed to North Korea on Tuesday to watch the promised destruction of its nuclear test site, a move seen as a goodwill gesture before a planned summit with the United States (US).
Reporters from China, the US and Russia departed on a charter flight from Beijing, according to Chinese state broadcaster CGTN which is part of the contingent.
The group will cover the demolition of the Punggye-ri nuclear testing site inside a mountain in the northeast of the country, which is scheduled to take place between Wednesday to Friday, depending on the weather.
Agence France-Presse is one of a number of major media organisations not invited to cover the event.
Pyongyang announced earlier this month that it planned to "completely" destroy the facility by blowing up the test site's access tunnels, a move welcomed by Washington and Seoul.
The decision came after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared the country's nuclear force complete and said it had no further need for the complex
Experts are divided over whether the move will render the site useless-previous similar gestures have been rapidly reversed when the international mood soured.
"Frankly a nuclear test site can be easily reassembled," Kim Hyun-wook, an expert at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy, told the news agency.
"But still, by dismantling it, North Korea is showing its willingness to not conduct nuclear tests at least for a while and signaling it has sufficient number of nuclear weapons," he added.
Yang Moo-jin, from the University of North Korean Studies, said it was significant Pyongyang wasn't using the site's destruction as a "bargaining chip" with the United States ahead of the planned June 12 summit in Singapore between Kim and US President Donald Trump.
"This move testifies sincerity in the North's commitment to defusing tension through negotiations," he said.
Punggye-ri has been the site of all six of the North's nuclear tests, the latest and by far the most powerful in September last year, which Pyongyang said was an H-bomb.
Dialogue brokered by South Korea has seen US-North Korea relations go from trading personal insults and threats of war after that test to planning for a summit.
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