Former US President Jimmy Carter says he is ready to travel to North Korea in a bid to help diffuse the growing tension between his country and Pyongyang.

Carter, who was president from 1977 to 1981, when asked if it was time for another diplomatic mission said: “I would go, yes”.

The 93-year-old said he had spoken to a friend who is Trump’s National Security Adviser Lt.-Gen. H. R. McMaster, but said he had not got a positive response.

”I told him that I was available if they ever need me, I am afraid, too, of the situation.

”They want to save their regime. And we greatly overestimate China’s influence on North Korea.

Particularly to Kim,” who, Carter added, has ”never, so far as I know, been to China.

”And they have no relationship. Kim Jong-il did go to China and was very close to them.”

Describing the North Korean leader as “unpredictable,” Carter worried that if Kim thinks Trump will act against him, he could do something pre-emptive.

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 Pacific, maybe even our mainland,” Carter said.

In the mid 1990s, the former president traveled to Pyongyang over the objections of President Bill Clinton, and struck a deal with Kim Il Sung, grandfather of the current leader.