North Korea threatens to cancel Trump meeting

[PAULYPOKER]

North Korea threatens to cancel Kim-Trump meeting

North Korea has threatened to cancel an unprecedented summit between its leader Kim Jung-un and US President Donald Trump.


Washington will "have to undertake careful deliberations about the fate of the planned North Korea-US summit in light of this provocative military" said the North's official news agency KCNA on Tuesday.


"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," it added.


Shortly after the announcement, Washington said that it was continuing with preparations for meeting between Trump and Kim.


"We will continue to plan the meeting," said State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, adding that US had received "no notification" of the meeting's cancelation from Pyongyang.


"We have not heard anything from that government or the government of South Korea to indicate we would not continue conducting these exercises or would not continue planning for our meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un next month," she added.


The summit has been scheduled between Kim and US President Donald Trump in Singapore on June 12.


According to South Korea's Yonhap news agency on Tuesday, Pyongyang also cancelled high-level talks set for Wednesday with Seoul over the US and the South's Max Thunder joint military exercises.


The KCNA referred to the military exercises a "provocation" and said that it had no choice but to cancel the talks.


The canceled meeting was aimed at implementing a declaration resulting from an April 27 inter-Korea summit, which included vows to end the Korean War and pursue "complete denuclearization."


Following the statement the North said that the meeting will be held at a yet to be announced date.


Earlier, South Korea announced an agreement with the North to hold high-level inter-Korea talks on measures to bring about denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.






The meeting, proposed by North Korea, marks the latest in a series of steps that have prompted optimism that the 70-year-old hostilities on the Korean Peninsula may finally come to an end.



North Korean leader Kim Jong-un met with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in a historic summit last month. They issued the declaration at the end of the summit. Moon has also said Kim has promised to give up its nuclear program.



The two sides have been reaching out to one another since January. Until then, inter-Korea relations were marked by hostility and permanent fears of war.



The United States, which has substantial presence in the region, was on a war footing with the North on a permanent basis.



But relations have dramatically improved in the past four months and a half.



Pyongyang has also announced plans to dismantle its Punggye-ri nuclear test site by the end of May, prior to the North Korea-US summit meeting. It has also suspended its missile and nuclear programs but has not publicly committed to abandoning those programs.
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[PAULYPOKER]

North Korea threatens to cancel summit with Trump over U.S. and South Korea military drills




Associated Press writers Lolita Baldor and Josh Lederman in Washington contributed to this report.



SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Wednesday canceled a high-level meeting with South Korea and threatened to scrap a historic summit next month between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over military exercises between Seoul and Washington that Pyongyang has long claimed are invasion rehearsals.



The surprise declaration, which came in a pre-dawn dispatch in North Korea’s state media, appears to cool what had been an unusual flurry of outreach from a country that last year conducted a provocative series of weapons tests that had many fearing the region was on the edge of war. It’s still unclear, however, whether the North intends to scuttle all diplomacy or merely wants to gain leverage ahead of the planned June 12 talks between Kim and Trump.


The statement by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency was released hours before the two Koreas were to meet at a border village to discuss how to implement their leaders’ recent agreements to reduce military tensions along their heavily fortified border and improve their overall ties.



It called the two-week Max Thunder drills, which began Monday and reportedly include about 100 aircraft, an “intended military provocation” and an “apparent challenge” to an April summit between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, when the leaders met on their border in their countries’ third-ever summit talks since their formal division in 1948. KCNA said the U.S. aircraft mobilized for the drills include nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and stealth F-22 fighter jets, two of the U.S. military assets it has previously said are aimed at launching nuclear strikes on the North.



“The United States must carefully contemplate the fate of the planned North Korea-U.S. summit amid the provocative military ruckus that it’s causing with South Korean authorities,” the North said Wednesday. “We’ll keenly monitor how the United States and South Korean authorities will react.”



Annual military drills between Washington and Seoul have long been a major source of contention between the Koreas, and analysts have wondered whether their continuation would hurt the detente that, since an outreach by Kim in January, has replaced the insults and threats of war. Earlier — and much larger — springtime drills, which Washington and Seoul toned down, went off without the North’s typically fiery condemnation or accompanying weapons tests.



South Korean called North Korea’s move “regrettable” and demanded a quick return to talks.
Seoul’s Unification Ministry spokesman Baek Tae-hyun said the North’s decision goes against the spirit of last month’s inter-Korean summit, where the Koreas’ leaders issued a vague vow on the “complete denuclearization” on the Korean Peninsula and pledged permanent peace between the rivals. He didn’t provide a straightforward answer on whether Seoul sees the North’s talks cancellation as potentially affecting the meeting between Trump and Kim.



In Washington, the U.S. State Department emphasized that Kim had previously indicated he understood the need and purpose of the U.S. continuing its long-planned exercises with South Korea. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the U.S. had not heard anything directly from Pyongyang or Seoul that would change that.



“We will continue to go ahead and plan the meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong Un,” Nauert said.



Army Col. Rob Manning said this current exercise is part of the U.S. and South Korea’s “routine, annual training program to maintain a foundation of military readiness.” Manning, a Pentagon spokesman, said the purpose of Max Thunder and exercise Foal Eagle — another training event — is to enhance the two nations’ abilities to operate together to defend South Korea.



“The defensive nature of these combined exercises has been clear for many decades and has not changed,” said Manning.



Washington and Seoul delayed an earlier round of drills in the spring because of the North-South diplomacy surrounding February’s Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in the South, which saw Kim send his sister to the opening ceremonies.



Kim told visiting South Korean officials in March that he “understands” the drills would take place and expressed hope that they’ll be modified once the situation on the peninsula stabilizes, according to the South Korean government.



South Korea didn’t immediately make any official response to the North’s announcement.
The North’s statement Wednesday comes amid a slew of surprising moves in recent weeks.
On Tuesday, South Korea’s military said North Korea was moving ahead with plans to close its nuclear test site next week, an assessment backed by U.S. researchers who say satellite images show the North has begun dismantling facilities at the site.



The site’s closure was set to come before the Kim-Trump summit, which had been shaping up as a crucial moment in the decades-long push to resolve the nuclear standoff with the North, which is closing in on the ability to viably target the mainland United States with its long-range nuclear-armed missiles.



Despite the North’s moves, some experts were skeptical about whether Kim would completely give up a nuclear program that he had pushed so hard to build. Kim has expressed his intention to negotiate over his weapons, but he still uses a long-contentious term, “the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” The North previously has used this phrase when demanding that the United States pull its 28,500 troops out of South Korea and withdraw its so-called “nuclear umbrella” security guarantee to South Korea and Japan as a condition for its nuclear disarmament.



Wednesday’s threat could also be targeted at showing a domestic audience that Kim is willing to stand up to Washington. Kim has repeatedly told his people that his nukes are a “powerful treasured sword” that can smash U.S. hostility.



North Korea also has a long history of launching provocations or scrapping deals with Seoul and Washington at the last minute.



In 2013, North Korea abruptly cancelled reunions for families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War just days before they were held to protest what it called rising animosities ahead of joint drills between Seoul and Washington. A year earlier in 2012, the North conducted a prohibited long-range rocket launch weeks after it agreed to suspend weapons tests in return for food assistance.
___
Associated Press writers Lolita Baldor and Josh Lederman in Washington contributed to this report.

[PAULYPOKER]

Trump clueless if N Korea summit will be held

[DwightShrute]

[dante1]

not very long ago I wrote when you are dealing with assholes (NK) this time, anything is possible. I also wrote that even if a deal is consummated NK will make sure that they will drag it out.

but most importantly I wrote at least two or three times that NK will in no way give up their nukes, it is simply an impossibility. I wrote that they have been developing those nukes for almost three decades and giving them up was, I think I said...a bridge too far. Common sense my friends, Libya, DT tendency to lie, NK tendency to lie. You got two assholes attempting to make a deal.

Having said that I hope something positive does come out of this, I love my family, I love humanity, I am not too much in love with some humans.

Add to that the asshole destroys an agreement that was working right before a scheduled meeting with NK, and some of you want to tell me he is a deal maker and he is not stupid. lol

[dante1]

this is all this poor guy has, Pauly ask him to explain why the little yellow man. I constantly ask him questions--nothing. See what you can get. lol

[PAULYPOKER]

North Korea threatens to cancel talks with South

[DwightShrute]

North Korea threatens to cancel talks with South

come on. you know its just part of the act. Let the MSM cheers for Trump to fail.

[PAULYPOKER]

‘North Korea aware of Trump’s real intentions




PressTV-‘North Korea not foolish to abandon defenses'
It would be foolish for North Korea to accept a Libyan disarmament model, says an American analyst.


“The media presented North Korea as being a submissive and [its] one-sided acceptance of US demands,” he said. “This was never the case; it was a fabrication by Washington.”



The biggest giveaway for North Korea came when Trump’s national security advisor, John Bolton, suggested a disarmament plan similar to the one offered to Libya, said Petras.

[PAULYPOKER]

‘US neocons trying to scuttle Korean peace process’




The neoconservatives in the Donald Trump administration are trying to scuttle the peace process between North Korea and South Korea and the United States, according to American writer and academic James Petras.



The United States has canceled a training exercise involving nuclear-capable B-52 bombers flying alongside South Korean warplanes after North Korea threatened to call off a planned meeting between Kim John-un and President Trump, according to reports.



The move follows repeated objection by Pyongyang to US military exercises on the Korean Peninsula and a threat that it would cancel the highly-anticipated summit between the North Korean leader and the US president on June 12.


The Pentagon had initially asserted that it had no plans to change the scope of its exercises in the region, but the South Koreans asked not to take part in what was intended to be an air drill involving the US, South Korea and Japan, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing US officials.



Professor Petras told Press TV on Saturday that “North Koreans are absolutely right because this is a form of intimidation and it sets a very ugly tone to any possibility of negotiations.”



“If the US thinks that it can intimidate North Korea by this massive military operation, they are very seriously wrong,” he stated.



“I think the North Koreans have made some gestures, very positive gestures regarding the negotiations,” the analyst added.



Petras said the US-South Korean joint exercise was “a military operation which threatens North Korea. So I think it was a badly calculated step taken by the US and especially South Korea which had been interested in a peaceful resolution of their differences. So overall I think it’s very clear to everyone that Washington took a false step.”



“Now there’s another theory that the hawks, the neocons in the Trump administration carried out this operation to scuttle the negotiation process knowing in advance that this was a very provocative action,” he argued.

[RoyBacon]

NK wants an Iran type deal. But Obama is long gone.

Trump walking a high wire with China, successfully so far. IMO they need to cancel the meeting and turn sanctions into a naval & aircraft blockade.

We need to cut off their fuel and weapons supply lines now.

[PAULYPOKER]

‘Trump aides want to sabotage deal with North Korea’