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US President Donald Trump sounded a note of caution Wednesday about his much-vaunted summit with Kim Jong Un, saying “we'll see” after Pyongyang threatened to cancel.

Trump said the US government had not received any official word of a change in plans for the June 12 meeting in Singapore.

“We haven't been notified at all. We'll have to see,” Trump said in the Oval Office.

“We haven't seen anything. We haven't heard anything. We will see what happens. Whatever it is, it is.”

After weeks of warm words and diplomatic backslapping, Pyongyang abruptly threatened to pull out Tuesday, over US demands for “unilateral nuclear abandonment.”

In an angrily worded statement, the North warned “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.”

The statement was attributed to first vice foreign minister Kim Kye Gwan and carried by state media KCNA.

In that case, he added, Pyongyang would have to “reconsider” its participation at next month's summit in Singapore.

The first vice foreign minister also tore into Trump's National Security Advisor John Bolton for drawing parallels between North Korea and Libya, calling the comparison “absolutely absurd.” “We do not hide our feeling of repugnance towards him,” he said of Bolton.

Bolton has pushed the idea of a deal with North Korea like that reached with Libya's Moamer Kadhafi, who agreed in 2003 to the elimination of his country's nuclear programme and chemical weapons arsenal to gain sanctions relief.

After giving up his atomic programme, Kadhafi was killed in 2011 in an uprising backed by NATO bombing.

A plea from China

Experts have not been surprised by the sudden about face, expecting bumps in the road as tough issues to be discussed in the meeting come into sharper focus.

Washington is pressing for North Korea's complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation. But so far, the North has given no public indication of what it is offering, beyond a broad commitment to denuclearisation of the “Korean peninsula.”

Pyongyang “made clear on several occasions that precondition for denuclearisation is to put an end to anti-DPRK hostile policy and nuclear threats and blackmail of the United States,” the North Korean minister said.

Analysts said Pyongyang appeared to be trying to redefine the terms of the debate.

“It's a diplomatic tactic,” Kim Hyun-wook, professor at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy, told AFP, calling it “brinkmanship to change the US position.”

“It looks like Kim Jong Un was pushed into accepting US demands for 'denuclearisation-first' but is now trying to change its position after normalising North Korea-China relations and securing economic assistance,” he added.

“The classic North Korean tightrope diplomacy between the US and China has begun.”

US officials have repeatedly claimed credit for Washington's “maximum pressure” policy for bringing Pyongyang to the negotiating table.

Joshua Pollack of the Middlebury Institute for International Studies said Pyongyang had been irritated by the “triumphalist tone.”

“The North Koreans aren't happy with what they're seeing and hearing,” he said. “There is still a yawning gulf between expectations for diplomacy in Pyongyang and Washington, DC.”

Thunderstruck

KCNA also denounced the Max Thunder joint military exercises being held between the US and South Korea as a “rude and wicked provocation,” and Seoul said it had received a message cancelling planned high-level talks “indefinitely.”

The two-week drills started last Friday and involves some 100 aircraft from the two allies, including F-22 stealth fighter jets.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters it had received “no notification” of a position change by North Korea on next month's meeting.

On DawnNews

Comments (8) Closed

M. Saeed

May 17, 2018 12:12am

Hopelessly incorrigible and proud to the hilt Trump.

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Skeptic

May 17, 2018 01:08am

He means, he blew it big time! By adding John Bolton - the brash outspoken war-monger from G.W. Bush era, and then the uncouth, wreckless and inconsistent Guiliani to his defence team, Trump keeps creating more chaos to his administration and continues to dig his own grave with blunders after blunders.

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Zak

May 17, 2018 01:59am

The game is played both ways. One can’t, propose, dictate, gloat, and not change what needs to be changed. North Koreans are deft at playing high stakes. They will get what they want and keep what they have.

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Syed Chishti

May 17, 2018 02:29am

The only way the World can be peaceful place is through diplomacy&dialogue. Times of arms twisting is,”Gone with the Wind.” The unification of the South&North Korea is a possible way of avoiding a head on collision by a third party,

“Fire&Fury” rhetoric, can only give the world aches&pains of another World War-III and nothing else,in which;this time not hundred of millions, but billions of planet earth population would be affected.The scorching of earth policy is only going to get the similar response from other Nuclear Power’s.The best solution to solve critical world issues are through pursuasive dialogues&not anymore carrot&sticks or for that matter hollow threats.

Everyone on this planet earth knows use of any Nuclear Weapons attacks on one country by another to neutralize the already gain Nuclear capacities will produce an equal or an opposite reaction.The Newtons third Law of Motion must never be forgotten.The way forward is let’s talk&solve Civil&Military issues bilaterally.

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Moth

May 17, 2018 02:30am

American foreign policy. If you throw a loose ball America is going to catch it. Kim - right now you have 4 aces in your hand. You set the terms and condition of the meeting.

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Oa

May 17, 2018 03:09am

US to NK: negotiate with us to abandon your program like gaddafi did.
NK: you mean the dead gaddafi?

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MONIER

May 17, 2018 03:55am

And so will we see Mr. Trump

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Ghulam Samdani

May 17, 2018 04:24am

The crux of the problem is the US and South Korea joint exercises designed to invade and destroy North Korea. How can anybody sit and talk in good faith when the opposing party is preparing to invade and destroy you - utter stupidity.