The summit is scheduled for June 12, but could it fail?
For years the US and South Korea have conducted combat drills that both say are vital to defending the Korean Peninsula.
But on Wednesday, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un cancelled a planned summit with South Korea, calling the drills a provocation.
Pyongyang is also threatening to cancel a planned summit, t he culmination of nearly six months of intense diplomacy, between US President Donald Trump and Kim on June 12.
The US is calling for the denuclearisation of the peninsula and a complete dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.
In its latest statement, North Korea said the US should stop asking for that unless Trump offers something in return.
But is North Korea likely to walk on the negotiation? Here is what we know: What is North Korea saying?
The US administration said it is looking for irreversible denuclearisation and the total decommissioning of nuclear weapons, missiles and biochemical weapons in North Korea. Its formula is: « abandoning nuclear weapons first, compensating afterwards. »
North Korea has responded with anger. « 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… summit, » Kim Kye-gwan, North Korea’s first vice minister of foreign affairs, has said in a statement.
Kim Kye-gwan has also criticised comments by Trump’s top security adviser, John Bolton, and other US officials, who have said North Korea should follow the « Libyan model » of nuclear disarmament and provide a « complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement ».
« We shed light on the quality of Bolton already in the past, and we do not hide our feeling of repugnance towards him, » Kim Kye-gwan has said.
