Despite North Korea’s Threat to Cancel Summit, US Still Hopeful
The United States is still hopeful about a planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un but President Donald Trump is prepared for a tough negotiation process, Reuters reported White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders as saying on Wednesday.
North Korea threatened to pullout from the proposed summit between Kim and Trump, saying it may reconsider if Washington insists it unilaterally gives up its nuclear weapons.
The highly anticipated Trump-Kim meeting is due to hold on June 12 in Singapore.
“We’re still hopeful that the meeting will take place and we’ll continue down that path but at the same time we’ve been prepared that these could be tough negotiations,” Reuters quoted Sanders as saying in an interview with Fox News.
“The president is ready if the meeting takes place. If it doesn’t, we’ll continue the maximum pressure campaign that’s been ongoing.”
Sanders said the comments from North Korea were “not something that is out of the ordinary in these types of operations.”
“The president’s fully prepared and fully ready to carry on in these conversations both leading up to and if the meeting takes place,” she said. “He’ll be there and he’ll be ready.”
According to North Korea’s official KCNA news agency, Pyongyang’s first vice minister of foreign affairs, Kim Kye Gwan, specifically criticised U.S. national security adviser John Bolton, who has called for the North to quickly give up its nuclear arsenal in a deal that mirrors Libya’s abandonment of its weapons of mass destruction.
The vice-foreign minister, according to BBC, accused the US of making reckless statements and of harbouring sinister intentions, pointing the finger squarely at US National Security Adviser John Bolton.
“We do not hide our feeling of repugnance towards him,” Kim Kye-gwan said.
Sanders played down those concerns. “I haven’t seen that as part of any discussions so I’m not aware that that’s a model that we’re using,” she told reporters at the White House on Wednesday.
The groundbreaking agreement for Kim and Trump to meet came about as North Korea said it was committed to denuclearising the Korean peninsula.
Exactly what that would entail has remained unclear, but North Korea has invited foreign media to witness the dismantling of its main nuclear test site later this month.
Bolton recently said North Korea could follow a “Libya model” of verifiable denuclearisation, but this alarms Pyongyang, which watched Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi give up his nuclear programme only for him to be killed by Western-backed rebels a few years later.
The BBC’s Laura Bicker in Seoul says North Korea - which had long said its nuclear arsenal is essential for its survival as a state - is now making its demands clear.