US 'hopeful' For Kim-Trump Summit As North Threatens To Cancel

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US 'hopeful' for Kim-Trump summit as North threatens to cancel

The White House on Wednesday voiced hope the upcoming summit between North Korea's Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump will proceed as planned, as Pyongyang threatened to pull out over US pressure for "unilateral nuclear abandonment."

Washington, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 16th May, 2018 ) :The White House on Wednesday voiced hope the upcoming summit between North Korea's Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump will proceed as planned, as Pyongyang threatened to pull out over US pressure for "unilateral nuclear abandonment." The comments from the North about the meeting, set for June 12 in Singapore, were the first sign of a hiccup after weeks of tentative rapprochement.

"We're still hopeful that the meeting will take place and we'll continue down that path," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told Fox news. "At the same time ... we've been prepared that these might be tough negotiations." "The president is ready if the meeting takes place.

And if it doesn't, we will continue the maximum pressure campaign that has been ongoing." In an angrily worded statement, the North warned on Wednesday it may back out of the high-level summit if the United States pressures it to give up its nuclear arsenal.

"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," first vice foreign minister Kim Kye Gwan said in a statement carried by state media.

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 shed light on the quality of Bolton already in the past, and we do not hide our feeling of repugnance towards him," he said.

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 program and chemical weapons arsenal to gain sanctions relief. After giving up his atomic program, Kadhafi was killed in 2011 in an uprising backed by NATO bombing.