World Bulletin / News Desk

US President Donald Trump on Monday said he would not rule out meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, under the right conditions, as Pyongyang threatens to carry out a sixth nuclear test.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula have been running high for weeks, with signs the North might be preparing a long-range missile launch or a new nuclear test -- prompting tough talk from Washington, which has refused to rule out a military strike in response.

Trump has so far placed his biggest bet on getting China to use its leverage to pressure Pyongyang to change its behavior -- a strategy that has failed to produce results in the past.

The Republican president has also said he is ready to act alone in the stand-off, however -- and on Monday signaled that this could involve face-to-face talks with Kim, who has yet to meet a foreign leader since taking power.

"If it would be appropriate for me to meet with him I would, absolutely. I would be honored to do it," Trump said in an interview with Bloomberg.

"If it's under the, again, under the right circumstances. But I would do that," Trump said.

In the latest rhetoric to fuel jitters across the region, North Korea warned Monday that it was prepared to carry out a nuclear test "at any time and at any location" set by its leadership.

The regime will continue bolstering its "preemptive nuclear attack" capabilities unless Washington scraps its hostile policies, a spokesman for the North's foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run KCNA news agency.

"The DPRK's measures for bolstering the nuclear force to the maximum will be taken in a consecutive and successive way at any moment and any place decided by its supreme leadership," the spokesman added, apparently referring to a sixth nuclear test and using the North's official name, the Democratic Republic of Korea.