WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said “we will have to see” if his planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will go ahead.
Trump told reporters on Wednesday the United States has not been officially notified about North Korea’s threat to pull out of the meeting. “No decision, we haven’t been notified at all… We haven’t seen anything, we haven’t heard anything,” he said.
Washington will still insist that North Korea gives up its nuclear weapons despite the threat to cancel the historic summit, said Trump. North Korea threw the June 12 Trump-Kim meeting, to be held in Singapore, into doubt saying it might not attend if the US continues to demand that it unilaterally abandons its nuclear weapons.
“If the US is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue and cannot but reconsider our proceeding to the … summit,” said a statement by Kim Kye-gwan, North Korea’s first vice minister of foreign affairs.
He also derided as “absurd” comments byTrump’s top security adviser John Bolton who suggested discussions with North Korea should be similar to those that led to components of Libya’s nuclear programme being shipped to the US in 2004.
North Korea clashed with Bolton when he worked under the administration of former president George W Bush.
“We shed light on the quality of Bolton already in the past, and we do not hide our feeling of repugnance towards him,” Kim Kye-gwan said.
The White House said it was still hopeful the summit would take place, adding Trump was prepared for a tough negotiation.
“The president is ready if the meeting takes place,” Sarah Sanders, the White House spokeswoman, told Fox News. “If it doesn’t, we’ll continue the maximum pressure campaign that’s been ongoing.”
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