Former US President Jimmy Carter says he has offered to go to North Korea on behalf of the White House to help diffuse rising tensions with Pyongyang, but has not been asked.
Carter, a Democrat who was president from 1977 to 1981, said he had spoken to President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, who is a friend, but so far has gotten a negative response, The New York Times reported Sunday.
“I would go, yes,” Carter told the newspaper when he was asked in an interview at his house in Plains, Georgia, whether it was time for another diplomatic mission.
”I told him that I was available if they ever need me,” the Times quoted Carter as saying.
Calling North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “unpredictable,” Carter said he worried the young leader could take pre-emptive action.
“I think he’s now got advanced nuclear weaponry that can destroy the Korean Peninsula and Japan, and some of our outlying territories in the…