N Korea scrapped Pence talks ‘at last minute’: US
WASHINGTON/SEOUL: US vice president Mike Pence was scheduled to meet with North Korean officials, including leader Kim Jong Un’s sister, while in South Korea for the Winter Olympics this month but the North Koreans cancelled at the last minute, officials said on Tuesday.
“North Korea dangled a meeting in hopes of the vice president softening his message, which would have ceded the world stage for their propaganda during the Olympics,” Pence’s chief of staff Nick Ayers said.
But after Pence condemned North Korean human rights abuses and announced plans for new economic sanctions, “they walked away from a meeting or perhaps they were never sincere about sitting down,” Ayers said.
Pence was going to meet with Kim Jong Un’s younger sister Kim Yo Jong and the nominal head of state, Kim Yong Nam, but the North Koreans called off the February 10 meeting two hours before it was set to start, a US official said, confirming a story first reported by the Washington Post.
The encounter would have been the first scheduled between senior officials from the Trump administration and Pyongyang.
South Korea’s presidential Blue House said it had nothing to say on the matter.
South Korea’s foreign minister Kang Kyung-hwa told lawmakers on Wednesday that talks to improve inter-Korean relations had to go in hand with those linked to denuclearisation of the North. Seoul was in close talks and cooperation with Washington regarding engagements with Pyongyang, the minister said.