Warning over Trump-Kim talks

U.S. President Donald Trump, (left) and North Korean leader Kim Jong un. Photos / Supplied

North Korea is rapidly moving the goalposts for next month's summit between leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump, saying the United States must stop insisting it "unilaterally" abandon its nuclear programme and stop talking about a Libya-style solution to the standoff.

The latest warning, delivered yesterday by former North Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Kye Gwan, fits Pyongyang's well-established pattern of raising the stakes in negotiations by threatening to walk out if it doesn't get its way.

This comes just hours after the North Korean regime cancelled talks set down for yesterday with South Korean officials and cast doubt on the planned summit with Trump by protesting against joint air force drills taking place in South Korea, saying they were ruining the diplomatic mood.

If the Trump Administration approaches the summit "with sincerity" for improved relations, "it will receive a deserved response from us", Kim Kye Gwan, now Vice-Foreign Minister, said in a statement carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency.

"However, 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 DPRK-US summit," he said, using the abbreviation for North Korea's official name.

He also questioned the sequencing of denuclearisation first, compensation second.

Analysts said they were not surprised by these latest developments in what has been a year of diplomatic whiplash.

"The US and South Korea hold an exercise, which contains some strategic strike elements to it. US officials can't seem to get on the same page regarding denuclearisation and what is required of North Korea," said Ken Gause, a North Korea leadership expert at CNA, a Virginia-based consulting firm. "At some point, North Korea was going to cry foul."

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, (left), and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Photo / AP

Trump and Kim Jong Un are due to meet in Singapore on June 12, which would be the first time a North Korean leader had met with a sitting US president.

Trump and his top aides, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton, have repeatedly said that the US wants the "complete verifiable irreversible denuclearisation of North Korea" — a high standard that Pyongyang has previously balked at.

Bolton, known for his sharply hawkish views, has said that North Korea must commit to a "Libya 2004" style disarmament. He was Under Secretary of State for Arms Control in 2004, when Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi agreed to give up its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.

But this is not a tempting model for North Korea. Seven years after surrendering his nuclear programme, Gaddafi was overthrown, and then brutally killed by opponents of his regime.

North Korea hit out at Bolton, whom the regime derided as "human scum" while he worked in the George W. Bush Administration, and at the suggestions that North Korea should be dealt with in the same way that the Bush Administration dealt with Libya and Iraq.

"This is not an expression of intention to address the issue through dialogue. It is essentially a manifestation of awfully sinister moves to impose on our dignified state the destiny of Libya or Iraq, which had been collapsed due to the yielding of their countries to big powers," Kim Kye Gwan said.

"[The] world knows too well that our country is neither Libya nor Iraq, which have met a miserable fate," he said, harking back to its previous criticism of Bolton. "We shed light on the quality of Bolton already in the past and we do not hide a feeling of repugnance towards him," the Vice-Minister said.

In negotiations over the years, North Korea has repeatedly threatened to walk out, and has on occasion actually walked out, over disagreements. In that respect, yesterday's announcement is not surprising and underscores analysts' warnings that North Korea will not give up its nuclear weapons easily.

During the April 27 inter-Korean summit, Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae In agreed to work toward the "complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula" — phrasing that was seen as code for mutual arms reduction.

North Korea yesterday protested against the joint US-South Korea military exercises currently taking place in the southern half of the peninsula. The two-week-long Max Thunder drills between the two countries' air forces is an annual event that began on Friday and involve about 100 warplanes including B-52 bombers and F-15K jets.Washington Post

They said it

As expected, DPRK is attempting to redefine the terms of negotiations. We must resist those hardliners who would take this as a pretext for war. There is a plausible deal that may yet improve US and allied security. — Adam Mount, Federation of American Scientists

It's almost like every expert who warned that Trump's victory lap was premature knew something about the subject. — Brian Klaas, London School of Economics

This has nothing to do with the exercises. This was about the Sunday talk shows. They watched Bolton and Pompeo closely, and they didn't like what they saw. — Vipin Narang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This is pretty blunt from North Korea. But on the other side of the equation, both Kim Jong Un and President Trump would still like the meeting to happen, and South Korea and China would also like to see a reduction of tensions. — Nicholas Kristof, New York Times