US President Donald Trump has acknowledged that it was unclear if his summit with North Korea would go ahead after Pyongyang threatened to pull out of the unprecedented meeting, a move that could deny him a potentially major foreign policy achievement.
North Korea threw into doubt the June 12 summit between its leader Kim Jong Un and Trump on Wednesday, saying it might not attend if Washington continues to demand it unilaterally abandon its nuclear arsenal. North Korea also called off talks with South Korea scheduled for Wednesday, blaming US-South Korean military exercises, according to a Reuters report Wednesday.
“We’ll have to see,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked if the summit was still on, though he insisted he would not back down from his demand for North Korea’s denuclearisation.
“No decision, we haven’t been notified at all... We haven’t seen anything, we haven’t heard anything,” he said.
Trump’s muted response was in marked contrast to just a few days ago when he exulted over North Korea’s release of three Americans, welcoming them home with praise for Kim and an expression of high hopes that the summit would produce “something very meaningful.”
Trump’s aides - who, according to one US official, were caught off guard by North Korea’s warning - were working on Wednesday to determine whether it was a negotiating ploy by Pyongyang or an attempt to scuttle the summit.
Cancellation of the summit, the first between US and North Korean leaders, would deal a major blow to what would be the biggest diplomatic achievement of Trump’s presidency. This comes at a time when his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal has drawn criticism internationally and his move of the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem has fuelled deadly violence on the Israel-Gaza border that killed at least 60 Palestinians.
Trump has raised expectations for the summit even as many analysts have been sceptical about the chances of bridging the gap because of questions about North Korea’s willingness to give up a nuclear arsenal that it says can hit the United States.
The White House said it was still hopeful the summit would take place, but Trump was prepared for a tough negotiation.
“The president is ready if the meeting takes place,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told Fox News. “If it doesn’t, we’ll continue the maximum pressure campaign that’s been ongoing.”
Sanders said the North Korean comments were “not something that is out of the ordinary in these types of operations.” Pyongyang has a long history of threatening to walk away from negotiations if it does not get its way.
North Korea’s first vice minister of foreign affairs, Kim Kye Gwan, cast doubt on whether the summit, which is set for Singapore, would be held.
He specifically criticiced US national security adviser John Bolton, who has called for North Korea to quickly give up its nuclear arsenal in a deal that would mirror Libya’s abandonment of its programme for weapons of mass destruction.
“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 ... summit,” he said.
North Korea clashed with Bolton when he worked under the Bush administration.
“We shed light on the quality of Bolton already in the past, and we do not hide our feeling of repugnance toward him,” Kim, the vice minister, said.
In an interview with Fox News Radio, Bolton brushed aside the remarks against him and said odds were still in favour of the summit going ahead.
“We are going to do everything we can to come to a successful meeting, but we are not going to back away from the objective of that meeting which is complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation of North Korea,” he said.
Sanders appeared reluctant to endorse the Libya model that the hawkish Bolton has touted, most recently on US television news programmes on Sunday.
She said the model that would be followed was “the President Trump model.” “He’s going to run this the way he sees fit. We’re 100 percent confident ... he’s the best negotiator.”