N. Korea rules out negotiations

SEOUL: North Korea ruled out talks and threatened to increase its nuclear arsenal in a fresh warning to Donald Trump’s administration yesterday as the United States president set off on a tour of Asia.

Trump is due to arrive in South Korea on Tuesday.

The North’s state-run KCNA news agency said in a commentary that the US should be disabused of the “absurd idea” that Pyongyang would succumb to international sanctions and give up its nuclear weapons, adding that it was in “the final stage of completing nuclear deterrence”.

“It had better stop daydreaming of denuclearisation talks with us,” said the commentary titled “Stop dreaming a daydream”.

“Our self-defensive nuclear treasure sword will be sharpened ever more unless the US hostile policy towards the DPRK is abolished once and for all,” it said, using an acronym for the official name of North Korea.

The White House said Trump would deliver a speech at South Korea’s National Assembly and urge “common resolve in the face of shared threat”.

But there is widespread concern in South Korea that the US president’s visit might worsen the situation if Trump fails to rein in his fierce rhetoric.

Some 500 protesters took to the streets in Seoul yesterday, chanting slogans and waving banners as they accused Trump of bringing the Korean peninsula to the brink of war.

Nearby, a group of some 100 Trump supporters, including many military veterans, chanted: “welcome to Korea”. AFP