Nth Korea expands threat to can talks
North Korea is rapidly moving the goalposts for next month’s summit between leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump, saying the United States must stop insisting it ‘‘unilaterally’’ abandon its nuclear programme and stop talking about a Libyastyle solution to the standoff.
The latest warning, delivered by former North Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Kye Gwan yesterday, fits Pyongyang’s well-established pattern of raising the stakes in negotiations by threatening to walk out if it doesn’t get its way.
This comes just hours after the North Korean regime cast doubt on the planned summit by protesting against joint air force drills taking place in South Korea, saying they were ruining the diplomatic mood.
If the Trump administration approaches the summit ‘‘with sincerity’’ for improved relations, ‘‘it will receive a deserved response from us,’’ Kim Kye Gwan, now vice foreign minister, said in a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency yesterday.
‘‘However, 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 DPRK-US summit,’’ he said, using the abbreviation for North Korea’s official name. He also questioned the sequencing of denuclearisation first, compensation second.
Analysts said they were not surprised by these latest developments in what has been a year of diplomatic whiplash.
‘‘The US and South Korea hold an exercise, which contains some strategic strike elements to it. US officials can’t seem to get on the same page regarding denuclearisation and what is required of North Korea,’’ said Ken Gause, a North Korea leadership expert at CNA, a Virginia-based consulting firm. ‘‘At some point, North Korea was going to cry foul.’’
Trump and Kim Jong Un are due to meet in Singapore on June 12, which would be the first time a North Korean leader had met a sitting US president.
Trump and his top aides, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton, have repeatedly said that the United States wants the ‘‘complete verifiable irreversible denuclearisation of North Korea’’ – a high standard that Pyongyang has previously balked at. Bolton, known for his sharply hawkish views, has said that North Korea must commit to a ‘‘Libya 2004’’ style disarmament. He was under secretary of state for arms control in 2004, when Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi agreed to give up its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.
But this is not a tempting model for North Korea. Seven years after surrendering his nuclear programme, Gaddafi was overthrown, and then brutally killed by opponents of his regime.
North Korea hit out at Bolton, whom the regime derided as ‘‘human scum’’ while he worked in the George W. Bush administration, and at the suggestions that North Korea should be dealt with in the same way that the Bush administration dealt with Libya and Iraq.