North Korea threatens to cancel Kim, Trump summit if US insists on denuclearisation

North Korea threatens to cancel summit with Donald Trump if Washington insists on Pyongyang’s unilateral denuclearisation.

UPDATE: North Korea has threatened to cancel the forthcoming summit between leader Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump if Washington presses ahead with its key demand for Pyongyang to unilaterally give up its nuclear arsenal.

If the Trump administration “corners us and unilaterally demands we give up nuclear weapons we will no longer have an interest in talks and will have to reconsider whether we will accept the upcoming DPRK-US summit”, first vice foreign minister Kim Kye Gwan said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

The statement came hours after Pyongyang cancelled high level talks with South Korean officials planned for today because of the US-South Korea military exercises known as Max Thunder.

South Korea’s Defense spokeswoman Choi Hyunsoo confirmed the military exercises, which began on Monday and reportedly include some 100 aircraftwill go on until May 25 as planned.

In his statement, Kim Kye Gwan criticised recent comments by Mr Trump’s top security adviser John Bolton and other US officials who have been talking about how the North should follow the “Libyan model” of nuclear disarmament and provide a “complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement.”

He also criticised other US comments that the North should completely abandon not only its nuclear weapons and missiles but also its biological and chemical weapons.

The comments were, he said, a “manifestation of awfully sinister move to impose on our dignified state the destiny of Libya or Iraq which had been collapsed due to yielding the whole of their countries to big powers.

“World knows too well that our country is neither Libya nor Iraq which have met miserable fate.”

Mr Kim added, of Mr Bolton, “We do not hide our feeling of repugnance toward him.”

On @AmbJohnBolton, the latest #DPRK statement declares: “we do not hide our feeling of repugnance towards him.” pic.twitter.com/JjSlh2QUZ0

— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) May 16, 2018

He said North Korea had committed to denuclearisation but under the precondition that the US would end its “anti-DPRK hostile policy and nuclear threats and blackmail.” However, he said, the US had misinterpreted Pyongyang’s “magnanimity” as weakness.

“We will appropriately respond to the Trump administration if it approaches the North Korea-US summit meeting with a truthful intent to improve relations,” Mr Kim said.

Earlier, KCNA claimed today’s planned military exercises were a rehearsal for an invasion of North Korea.

“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,” the KCNA report said, according to the South Korean news agency Yonhap News.

“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.”

Any move to cancel the summit would deal a devastating blow to growing hopes that a deal might be struck between Kim and Mr Trump to dismantle Pyongyang’s nuclear program in return for massive US economic assistance and security pledges.

The two leaders had agreed to meet in Singapore on June 12 in what would be the first ever meeting with a sitting US president and a North Korea leader.

The threat to cancel the summit comes as a surprise given the series of conciliatory gestures made by Kim in recent weeks including the release of three US hostages and the pledge to halt all nuclear and missile tests.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, left, shakes hands with South Korean President Moon Jae-in over the military demarcation line last month.

The Max Thunder exercises, one of the smaller military drills held between the two countries, were held last month without protest from Pyongyang.

But in the past North Korea has often reached angrily to joint military exercises between the US and the south.

South Korean officials were due to meet their counterparts from the north Wednesday to follow up the historic meeting last month between Kim and his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in.

(Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia)