SEOUL – North Korea threatened on Wednesday to cancel the summit betweenleader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump if Washington seeks to pushPyongyang into unilaterally giving up its nuclear arsenal.
It also cancelled high level talks with South Korea over the Max Thunderjoint military exercises being held between the United States and SouthKorea, denouncing the drills as a “rude and wicked provocation”.
It is a sudden and dramatic return to the the rhetoric of the past byPyongyang, after months of rapid diplomatic rapprochement on the peninsula.
“If the US is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateralnuclear abandonment, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue,”first vice foreign minister Kim Kye Gwan said in a statement carried bystate media.
In that case, he added, Pyongyang would have to “reconsider” itsparticipation at the summit, due in Singapore on June 12.
Washington said it will continue to plan the meeting in Singapore on June12, with State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert telling reporters ithad received “no notification” of a position change by North Korea.
The exercises were “not provocative” and would continue, she added.
The North’s arsenal is expected to be at the top of the agenda of thehistoric talks, but Pyongyang has long insisted it needs the weapons todefend itself against invasion by the US.
Washington is pressing for its complete, verifiable and irreversibledenuclearisation. But so far the North has not given any public indicationof what concessions it is offering, beyond euphemistic commitments todenuclearisation of the “Korean peninsula”.
Pyongyang had “made clear on several occasions that precondition fordenuclearisation is to put an end to anti-DPRK hostile policy and nuclearthreats and blackmail of the United States”, minister Kim said.
In the past, Pyongyang has demanded the withdrawal of the US troopsstationed in the South to protect it from its neighbour, and an end toWashington’s nuclear umbrella over its security ally.
The minister also blasted US National Security Advisor John Bolton’s talkof a “Libyan model” for North Korean denuclearisation.
It was a “sinister move to impose on our dignified state the destiny ofLibya or Iraq”, he said. “I cannot suppress indignation at such moves ofthe US, and harbour doubt about the US sincerity.”
The North has long said it needs nuclear weapons to protect itself againsta US invasion. After giving up his atomic programme, Libyan leader MoamerKhadafi was killed in an uprising backed by NATO bombing.
Minister Kim also dismissed offers by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo —who has visited Pyongyang twice in recent weeks, coming back the secondtime with three released US detainees — for US economic aid if the Northdenuclearises.
“We have never had any expectation of US support in carrying out oureconomic construction and will not at all make such a deal in future,” Kimsaid. – APP/AFP