North Korea summit axed by Trump
President Donald Trump has cancelled a summit with Kim Jong Un, blaming his decision on “anger and open hostility” from the North Korean regime.
In a letter to Kim, Trump says talks were “inappropriate” and warned the US military is “ready if necessary”.
In a dramatic diplomatic turn, President Donald Trump cancelled next month’s summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un yesterday, citing the “tremendous anger and open hostility” in a recent statement by the North.
Trump said in a letter to Kim released by the White House that, based on the statement, he felt it was “inappropriate, at this time, to have this longplanned meeting.” Adding his own threat, he said that while the North Koreans talk about their nuclear capabilities, “ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.”
The abrupt cancellation of the June 12 meeting withdraws the U.S. for now from an unprecedented summit that offered the prospect of a historic nuclear peace treaty or an epic diplomatic failure. No sitting American president has ever met with a North Korea leader.
In the North Korean statement that Trump cited, a top Foreign Ministry official referred to Vice President Mike Pence as a “political dummy” for his comments on the North and said it was up to the U.S. whether they will “meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-tonuclear showdown.”
Trump said the world was losing a “great opportunity for lasting peace and great prosperity and wealth.”
But he left the door open to the chance that the summit could yet be rescheduled: “If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write.”
One U.S. official said the decision to call off the summit was made yesterday morning in response to the statement disparaging Pence and threatening nuclear war. A White House official said it was incorrect to focus solely on the “dummy” comment, saying that the nuclear threats meant that no summit could be successful under such circumstances. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, testifying on Capitol Hill, said North Korea had not responded to repeated requests from U.S. officials to discuss logistics for the sumthe mit. He told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the lack of responses was an additional reason for Trump’s decision.
Pompeo said the North’s attitude had changed markedly since he returned from a trip to Pyongyang earlier this month during which he met with Kim and oversaw the release of three Americans being held there.
The cancellation came shortly after Kim made good on his promise to demolish his country’s nuclear test site, which was formally closed in a series of huge explosions as a group of foreign journalists looked on. The explosions at the test site deep in the mountains of the North’s sparsely populated northeast were supposed to build confidence ahead of the summit. However, the closing of the site is not an irreversible move and would need to be followed by many more significant measures to meet the demand for real denuclearisation.
president had agreed to the historic sit-down in March after months of trading insults and nuclear threats with the North Korean leader. But after criticism from North Korea, Trump cast doubt this week on whether the meeting would happen.
White House officials have privately predicted for weeks that the summit could be canceled once or twice before actually taking place, owing to the hard-nosed style of the two leaders. Trump has seemed to welcome chatter of a Nobel Peace Prize, but that has yielded in recent weeks to the sobering prospect of ensuring a successful outcome with the Kim.
Trump’s allies in Congress applauded the president, saying he was justified in pulling out of the meeting. But Eliot Engel, a leading top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, called the development “another embarrassment for the country”.