OPPORTUNITY
DONALD Trump has claimed North Korea’s “anger and open hostility” put paid to a planned peace summit.
In a letter to Kim Jong-un, the US president blamed the cancellation on the rogue North Korean leader’s recent comments.
Trump wrote: “I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting.”
The men were due to meet on June 12 in Singapore to discuss the North ditching nuclear weapons.
It would have been the first face-to-face between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader. In his BY CHRISTOPHER BUCKTIN letter, Trump made a thinly veiled threat to Kim about his willingness to wage war.
He wrote: “You talk about your nuclear capabilities but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never be used.”
Kim had threatened to cancel the summit after the US and South Korea continued military drills.
His state-run news agency claimed that was a rehearsal for an invasion.
North Korea’s vice foreign minister Choe Son Hui also attacked US vice-president Mike Pence for “unbridled and impudent remarks that North Korea might end like Libya.” She said: “We will neither beg the US for dialogue nor take the trouble to persuade them if they do not want to sit together with us.
“I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the US vice-president.”
Trump accused the North of “tremendous anger and open hostility”.
In his message, he added: “Please let this letter serve to represent that the Singapore summit, for the good of both parties, but to the detriment of the world, will not take place.”
The president added that he hoped to meet Kim in the future and that the healthy dialogue between them before the recent spat remained promising.
The summit had been cast by the White House as an opportunity to stave off a military conflict with the North and to showcase Trump’s ability to make progress where predecessors had struggled.
But he has run into the same diplomatic problem that has dogged presidents over the past 25 years.
Trump agreed to sit down with Kim after slinging schoolyard insults at each other throughout last year.
South Korea led the effort to broker talks with Pyongyang that led to the two countries competing together at the Winter Olympics.
Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokeswoman said yest e rday : “We are disappointed that the meeting will no longer go ahead as planned.
“We need to see an agreement that can bring about the complete verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and we will continue to work with our partners to that end.”