North Korea: U.S.' actions will determine if there is a summit or a "nuclear-to-nuclear showdown"
North Korea's vice foreign minister said Thursday the country will reconsider the summit with President Trump if the U.S. continues what she called "unlawful and outrageous acts," South Korean news website Yonhap reports. Mr. Trump said in an interview that will air Thursday of "Fox & Friends" that "there's a good chance" the meeting will happen on June 12.
Choe's remarks came hours after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he is "hopeful" the planned June 12 summit will happen.
In the interview with the state-run KCNA, Choe Son-hui said "whether the U.S. will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision and behavior of the United States."
Choe singled out Vice President Mike Pence, who told Fox News earlier this week North Korea could end up like Libya if Kim Jong Un failed to make a deal. Choe called Pence's remarks "ignorant and stupid."
Pompeo said the U.S.-North Korea summit is "still scheduled for June 12," despite Mr. Trump casting doubt that the summit will go on as planned. "Whatever it is, we will know next week about Singapore and if we go I think it will be a great thing for North Korea," Mr. Trump said Wednesday.
Amid the uncertainty, a White House team is headed to Singapore this weekend to work on logistics for the trip. White House spokesman Raj Shah said the effort would be led by Joe Hagin, deputy chief of staff for operations. Shah noted that an advance team goes out ahead of all scheduled presidential teams.
Also, the U.N. Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against North Korea has cleared the way for all members of Kim's delegation to travel to Singapore for the Trump meeting - even if they are on the U.N. sanctions blacklist, according to diplomats at the world body who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process was private. It also allows all delegation members to take home luxury goods whose import to North Korea is banned by the council. Kim himself is not on the sanctions blacklist, which bans travel and requires all countries to freeze assets.
If it goes ahead, it will be first meeting between a U.S. and a North Korean leader during more than six decades of hostility, and it would come just months after the North's rapid progress toward attaining a nuclear-tipped missile that could strike America fueled fears of war. But the North unexpectedly pulled out of planned peace talks with South Korea last week, objecting to U.S.-South Korean military exercises, and also threatened to abandon the planned Trump-Kim meeting, accusing the U.S. of a "one-sided demand" that it give up its nuclear weapons.
North Korea took particular offense at comments by Trump's hawkish national security adviser John Bolton that the U.S. was looking to the example of Libya, which relinquished its nuclear program in the early 2000s in exchange for sanctions relief. Libya's longtime autocratic leader Muammar Gaddafi was killed several years later after a Western-backed military intervention.