North Korea Casts Doubt on Trump Summit, Suspends Talks With South

The summit next month between Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump could be in jeopardy.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump.

(Photos: AP)

Ahead of a much-awaited summit between North Korea and the US scheduled to be held in June, the former said that it would never engage in economic trade with the US in exchange for giving up its nuclear programme – KCNA.

Saying that Trump would remain a failed leader if he followed in the footsteps of his predecessors, North Korea rejected the Libya-style denuclearisation of the country.

It added that it would need to reconsider the summit with US, if Washington insisted on North Korea giving up its nuclear programme.

North Korea’s statements comes in the midst of it suspending high-level talks with South Korea, that was scheduled for Wednesday, 16 May. The country had suspended the talks due to US-South Korean military exercises and had warned that a summit next month between its leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump could be in jeopardy.

North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency called the US-South Korean "Max Thunder" air combat drills, which it said involved US stealth fighters and B-52 bombers, a "provocation" that went against the trend of warming North-South ties.

“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,” Yonhap quoted KCNA as saying.

"The United States will also have to undertake careful deliberations about the fate of the planned North Korea-U.S. summit in light of this provocative military ruckus jointly conducted with the South Korean authorities."

Trump and Kim have been due to meet in Singapore on 12 June for a summit that until recently had looked impossible given the insults and threats the two leaders exchanged over the past year as tension rose over North Korea’s development of nuclear missiles capable of hitting the United States.

Heather Nauert, spokeswoman for the US State Department said it had no information from North Korea about threat to cancel the summit and that it continued to plan for that meeting.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Any cancellation of the summit, the first meeting between US and North Korean leaders, would deal a major blow to Trump’s efforts to score the biggest diplomatic achievement of his presidency.

He has raised expectations for a successful meeting even as many analysts have been skeptical of the chances of bridging the gap due to questions about North Korea’s willingness to give up a nuclear arsenal that now threatens the United States.

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