US President Donald Trump on Thursday cancelled his proposed summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on June 12 in Singapore and blamed Pyongyang’s “tremendous anger” and “open hostility” for his dramatic decision.
Trump’s announcement came hours after North Korea carried out what it said is the demolition of its nuclear test site. “I was very much looking forward to being there with you. Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting,” Trump wrote in a letter to Kim which was released to the Press.
“Therefore, please let this letter serve to represent that the Singapore summit, for the good of both parties, but to the detriment of the world, will not take place,” Trump said in his letter dated May 24. “You talk about your nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used,” he said, in an apparent warning to the North Korean leader.
Washington has made it clear it wants to see the “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation” of the North. But Pyongyang has vowed it will never give up its nuclear deterrence until it feels safe from what it terms US aggression. “I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me, and ultimately, it is only that dialogue that matters. Someday, I look very much forward to meeting you,” wrote the US President. Trump, known to use Twitter to announce major policy decisions of his administration, misspelled the North Korean leader’s name, referring to him as “Kim Jung-Un”.
Earlier, North Korea had threatened to reconsider Kim Jong-Un’s participation in a summit with US President Donald Trump in June, saying it is up to Washington to decide whether it wants to “meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown”. In a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui also called US Vice President Mike Pence a “political dummy” for remarks he made to Fox News earlier this week.
He had warned that North Korea “may end like libya” — where then-leader Muammar Gaddafi was killed by rebels in 2011 after renouncing nuclear weapons eight years earlier.
Choe said Pence had made “unbridled and impudent remarks” and that comparisons with libya betrayed his lack of knowledge. “As a person involved in the US affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the US Vice President,” said Choe, who was previously the regime’s top official in charge of relations with the US. The daughter of a former Premier, she is also thought to have direct access to Kim.