Kim regime outburst put summit with Trump on skids

Donald Trump stays firm on denuclearisation despite North Korea’s threat to cancel his summit next month with Kim Jong-un.

US President Donald Trump at the White House this week. Picture: AFP

UPDATED: The US will continue to press North Korea to abandon its nuclear program despite Pyongyang’s threat to cancel the summit between leader Kim Jong-un and the US President over the “one-sided” demand.

Speaking for the first time since North Korea’s surprise threat, Mr Trump tried to shrug off the warning, saying the US hadn’t been notified of Pyongyang’s intentions.

“We haven’t seen anything, we haven’t heard anything,” Mr Trump said as he welcomed the president of Uzbekistan to the White House. Appearing subdued as he answered reporters’ questions, he added: “We will see what happens.”

Kim puts summit on skids

Pyongyang’s threat came hours after the North cancelled high-level talks with Seoul over Max Thunder, the joint military exercises conducted by the US and South Korea.

The sudden shift over the proposed June 12 summit in Singapore caught Washington by surprise, forcing the Trump ­administration to scramble for ­information. The US President first learned of North Korea’s threat via a television report.

China last night urged its ally to proceed with the summit. Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the countries should ensure the meeting ran as planned and yielded “substantial outcomes”. “Only in this way can we consolidate the alleviation of the situation and maintain peace and stability in the region.”

North Korean Vice-Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan said Pyongyang had no interest in a “one-sided” summit in which it was pressured to give up nuclear weapons. “If the United States 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 North Korea-US summit,” he said.

The regime was not interested in accepting US economic ­assistance in return for abandoning its nuclear program. He criticised US officials who suggested the North should follow the ­“Libyan model” of disarmament.

“We have never had any expectation of US support in carrying out our economic con­struction and will not ... make such a deal in future,” he said

The minister singled out new US national security ­adviser John Bolton, saying North Korea felt “repugnance towards him”. He took issue with US views that the North should relinquish biological and chemical weapons. “We will appropriately ­respond to the Trump admin­istration if it approaches the North Korea-US summit meeting with a truthful intent to improve relations,” he said.

On Max Thunder, North Korean Central News Agency said the exercises were a ­rehearsal for an invasion.

“This exercise targeting us, which is being carried out across South Korea, is a flagrant challenge to the Panmunjom declaration and an intentional military provocation running counter to the positive political development on the Korean peninsula,” KCNA said. “The United States will also have to undertake careful deliberations about the fate of the planned North Korea-US summit in light of this provocative military ruckus jointly conducted with the South Korean authorities.

The South Korean authorities and the United States launched a large-scale joint air force drill against our republic even before the ink on the historic inter-Korean declaration has dried. There is a limit to our good will.”

The State Department said it had not received notice of a cancellation and was continuing to plan for the summit.

North Korea’s change of heart followed weeks of extraordinary progress in relations between the US and the Kim regime. Kim had made a series of conciliatory gestures, including the release of three US hostages.

On Tuesday, South Korea’s military said the North was moving ahead with plans to close its nuclear test site next week, which was backed by US researchers who said satellite images showed the North was dismantling facilities at the site.

The site’s closure was set to come before the summit, which had been shaping up as a crucial moment in the decades-long push to resolve the nuclear standoff with the North, which is closing in on the ability to target the US with nuclear-armed missiles. It would have been the first meeting between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader.

The White House was last night assessing whether the comments were a tactical move by Pyongyang to gain leverage ahead of the talks.

The Trump administration has been adamant it would accept nothing less from North Korea than the complete, verifiable and irreversible destruction of its nuclear weapons program. In return, it has promised enormous US private investment in the North to rebuild an economy crippled by international sanctions.

The North frequently reacts angrily to joint US-South Korean exercises. To avoid upsetting Pyongyang, the US and South Korea had reduced the scale of the two-week exercise and had not provided media access.

The Pentagon said the exercise, which involved about 100 warplanes, was aimed at improving the defence of South Korea, not attack the North.

Pentagon spokesman Rob Manning said the exercise was a “routine, annual training program to maintain a foundation of military readiness”. “While we will not discuss specifics, the ­defensive nature of these combined exercises has been clear for many decades and has not changed,” Colonel Manning said.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Kim Jong-un had previously said that he understood the need and the utility of the US and the South to conduct joint exercises. “They are exercises that are legal, they’re planned well, well in advance.” Kim took power weeks after former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s gruesome death at the hands of rebel forces in October 2011. The North has frequently used Gaddafi’s death to justify its own nuclear development in the face of perceived US threats.

In 2013, the North cancelled reunions for families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War just days before they were due to be held to protest what it called rising animosities ahead of joint drills between Seoul and Washington.

In 2012, the North conducted a prohibited long-range rocket launch weeks after it agreed to suspend weapons tests in return for food assistance.

Additional reporting: AP

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia.