SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Wednesday threatened to scrap a historic summit next month between its leader, Kim Jong Un, and U.S. President Donald Trump, saying it has no interest in a "one-sided" affair meant to pressure the North to abandon its nuclear weapons.

The warning by North Korea's first vice foreign minister came hours after the country abruptly canceled a high-level meeting with South Korea to protest U.S.-South Korean military exercises that the North has long claimed are an invasion rehearsal.

The surprise moves appear 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. Analysts said it's unlikely that North Korea intends to scuttle all diplomacy. More likely, they said, is that it wants to gain leverage ahead of the talks between Kim and Trump, scheduled for June 12 in Singapore.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the Trump administration is "still hopeful" that a planned summit with North Korea will take place.

Sanders said Wednesday that threats from the North to scrap the meeting were "something that we fully expected."

Sanders said President Donald Trump is "ready for very tough negotiations," adding that "if they want to meet, we'll be ready and if they don't that's OK." She said if there is no meeting, the U.S. would "continue with the campaign of maximum pressure" against the North.

North Korean first vice foreign minister Kim Kye Gwan said in a statement carried by state media that "we are no longer interested in a negotiation that will be all about driving us into a corner and making a one-sided demand for us to give up our nukes and this would force us to reconsider whether we would accept the North Korea-U.S. summit meeting."

He criticized recent comments by Trump's top security adviser, John Bolton, and other U.S. officials who have said the North should follow the "Libyan model" of nuclear disarmament and provide a "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement." He also took issue with U.S. views that the North should fully relinquish its biological and chemical weapons.

Some analysts say bringing up Libya, which dismantled its rudimentary nuclear program in the 2000s in exchange for sanctions relief, jeopardizes progress in negotiations with the North. Kim Jong Un took power weeks after former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's gruesome death at the hands of rebel forces amid a popular uprising in October 2011. The North has frequently used Gadhafi's death to justify its own nuclear development in the face of perceived U.S. threats.

The North's warning Wednesday fits a past North Korean pattern of raising tensions to bolster its positions ahead of negotiations with Washington and Seoul. But the country also has a long history of scrapping deals with its rivals at the last minute.

In 2013, North Korea abruptly canceled reunions for families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War just days before they were scheduled to begin to protest what it called rising animosities ahead of joint drills between Seoul and Washington. In 2012, the North conducted a prohibited long-range rocket launch weeks after it agreed to suspend weapons tests in return for food assistance.

On Wednesday, senior officials from the two Koreas were to sit down at a border village to discuss how to implement their leaders' recent agreements to reduce military tensions along their heavily fortified border and improve overall ties. But hours before the meeting was to start, the North informed the South that it would "indefinitely suspend" the talks, according to Seoul's Unification Ministry.</s>The White House distanced itself from the hard-line North Korea stance of President Donald Trump’s top security adviser, indicating his administration is committed to keeping next month’s summit with Kim Jong Un on track.

Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Wednesday that she was “not aware” of the administration advocating a so-called Libya model, in which North Korea would quickly ship his nuclear weapons program to the U.S. North Korea had earlier attacked National Security Adviser John Bolton for trying “to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment” and threatened to walk away from the June 12 summit in Singapore.

“I haven’t seen that as a specific thing,” Sanders said. “This is the President Trump model. He is going to run this the way he sees fit.”

The decades-old debate over how and when North Korea gives up its nuclear weapons program has reemerged in the run-up to Trump’s first-of-its-kind meeting with Kim. While Kim has agreed to discuss “denuclearization,” he wants a phased approach and an end to Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign of international sanctions.

“The fact that the Trump administration seems to be showing some flexibility is a welcome development because its posture on denuclearization thus far has been too inflexible to lead to a meaningful deal with North Korea,” said Mintaro Oba, a former U.S. State Department official who worked on North Korean issues. “The worst thing the White House could have done was to escalate the situation.”

Financial markets shrugged off concern that talks between the U.S. and North Korea would be derailed. South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index was little changed as 12:16 p.m. in Seoul.

Asked later Wednesday if the summit would go ahead, Trump said, “We’ll have to see.” He said that the administration was still pursuing denuclearization and that U.S. officials hadn’t yet been notified of North Korea’s concerns, which were expressed in a statement by First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan.

“We haven’t been notified at all,” Trump said.

The Libya approach described by Bolton is particularly controversial in North Korea because leader Muammar Qaddafi was killed by NATO-backed rebels two years after the last remnants of the program were delivered. “World knows too well that our country is neither Libya nor Iraq, which have met miserable fate,” Kim Kye Gwan said.

Both Bolton and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have said the U.S. wants North Korea’s “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization.” Pompeo, who has traveled to Pyongyang and met with Kim twice in the past few months, has also indicated the U.S. may initially accept a deal that puts the American homeland out of danger.

“Make no mistake about it: America’s interest here is preventing the risk that North Korea will launch a nuclear weapon into LA or Denver or into the very place we’re sitting here this morning,” Pompeo told Fox News Sunday.</s>In a sudden turn, North Korea early today bombarded both the United States and South Korea with criticism linked to comments by President Donald Trump and ongoing military drills.

North Korea surprised Seoul with a message around midnight that it intends to postpone indefinitely high-level talks that were scheduled for today.

South Korea's Defense Ministry responded by saying the Max Thunder training would continue as scheduled, while the Unification Ministry said in a statement the North's message was "regrettable."

With its latest announcement, North Korea "has again shot itself in the foot, this time on the cusp of a historic meeting with the U.S. president which could have ended the Korean War and eased its diplomatic isolation,” senior research fellow Bruce Klinger of the Heritage Foundation said today at a forum at the Asian Leadership Conference in Seoul.

"North Korea returned to acting like the belligerent regime of six months ago by canceling an inter-Korean meeting planned for today and threatening to suspend its summit with President Trump," Klinger added. "Pyongyang knew of the long-planned U.S.-South Korean military exercises that it cites as justification for its abrupt actions. Indeed, Kim Jong Un had dismissed the exercises as a concern during his meeting with a senior South Korean delegation in February.

"North Korea is back to its old game of trying to raise the stakes prior to a meeting. But Kim risks undermining the goodwill he had built up through his diplomatic outreach since January."

North Korea earlier threatened to pull out of a planned summit with the United States if Trump or officials demanded a "unilateral" abandonment of its nuclear arsenal, driving Kim Jong Un's nation "into a corner."

"The U.S. is miscalculating the magnanimity and broad-minded initiatives of the DPRK as signs of weakness and trying to embellish and advertise as if these are the product of its sanctions and pressure," Kim Kye Gwan, North Korea's first vice minister for foreign affairs and former nuclear-program negotiator, said.

Kim Kye Gwan accused "high-ranking officials of the White House and the Department of State" of "provoking" them with "unbridled remarks."

He also took aim at John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser.

Bolton recently said the administration is considering a roadmap for North Korea similar to Libya.

"The implementation of the decision means getting rid of all the nuclear weapons, dismantling them, taking them to Oak Ridge, Tennessee," Bolton said Sunday on ABC News' "This Week." "It means getting rid of the uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing capabilities."

North Korea's statement was "very aggressive" -- too aggressive to be regarded as "just a symbolic gesture or just a hint to the U.S. saying you guys need to slow down," Sue Mi Terry, a senior fellow and Korea chair at the Center for Strategic International Studies, said.

“If this is a calculation by Kim Jong Un to gain leverage in the upcoming talks with President Trump," Terry said today at the leadership conference in Seoul. "I think he might be miscalculating pouring cold water."

Analysts who track North Korea said the nation was sensitive to the Libya comparison, especially after what happened to that country's deposed leadership.

Bolton has previously said it would be "perfectly legitimate" to carry out a preemptive strike on North Korea. His appointment in March raised concerns among those in favor of reconciliation.

The North Koreans also appear sensitive to recent comments by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about economic opportunities available to the North if they denuclearize, according to Jung H. Pak, the SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korea Studies and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

"They are annoyed and irritated about the supposed carrot that we're throwing out there they didn’t even ask for," Pak said today at the leadership conference in Seoul. "It portrays them as a supplicant rather than equal negotiating partner that they want."

Still, this sudden turn by Pyongyang, especially after Kim Jong Un just stepped foot in South Korea, shows the North's frustration at U.S. posturing and the ongoing military drills.

The North had no choice but to put a stop to the inter-Korean high-level talks, blaming that South, which is "completely responsible" for "playing around in madness" when relations potentially had been heading toward peace, according to North Korean state news agency KCNA.

The South's Unification Ministry said in a statement, "It is regrettable that North unilaterally put off the inter-Korean high-level talks on the grounds of annual air-combat drills," adding that it would send a notice to the North today, perhaps to reschedule talks.

It was unclear exactly what message would be included.

Max Thunder is a two-week long annual joint military exercise featuring dozens of U.S. and South Korean aircraft. It was postponed from earlier this year because of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

ABC News' Hakyung Kate Lee, Jaesang Lee and Jiweon Park contributed to this report.</s>President Trump faced questions Wednesday about whether his summit with North Korea would still take place after the communist regime threatened to call off the meeting.

"We haven't seen anything, we haven't heard anything, we'll see what happens," Trump said.

When asked if Kim was bluffing when he threatened to cancel the planned June 12th Singapore summit, he replied, "We'll see what happens."

Trump made the comments to reporters while meeting with the President of Uzbekistan in the Oval Office.

The regime in Pyongyang issued the surprise announcement via state media early Wednesday, blaming annual military drills between the US and South Korea that started on Monday.

"The United States must carefully contemplate the fate of the planned North Korea-US summit amid the provocative military ruckus that it's causing with South Korean authorities," the North stated. "We'll keenly monitor how the United States and South Korean authorities will react."

The two-week drills are an annual event and have long been a source of contention between the two Koreas. However, in March, South Korea reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told visiting South Korean officials that he "understands" that this year's drill would take place. He also expressed hope that the two countries would modify the drills as conflict on the peninsula eases.

The State Department says the US is continuing plans for the North Korea summit and will go forward with the drills.

Spokeswoman Heather Nauert addressed the North Korea situation saying, "We have not heard anything from that government or the government of South Korea to indicate that we would not continue conducting those exercises."

North Korea's threat to cancel the summit is an abrupt change from its conciliatory behavior in recent weeks and months.

On Tuesday, South Korea's military reported that North Korea was moving forward with plans to close its nuclear test site next week.

 

 And just last week, North Korea released three American prisoners. President Trump welcomed the three home and praised Kim Jong Un.

"We want to thank Kim Jong Un who really was excellent to these three incredible people," he said. "I really think he wants to do something and bring their country into the real world."

Observers are still trying to understand why North Korea may have pivoted after so much outreach to the US. The North is not only threatening the US summit, it also canceled a high-level meeting with South Korea.

North Korea says the US is making a "one-sided demand" to force it to give up its nuclear weapons.

Some analysts believe that Kim is playing to a domestic audience, trying to convince his people that he will stand up to Washington.

Others note that North Korea has a long history of both provoking other countries and scrapping deals at the 11th hour. They believe the North may simply be trying to bolster its position and win concessions ahead of Kim's big summit with President Trump in Singapore.

China is now pushing against the North, urging it to go forward with the summit. The foreign ministry says the two countries should make sure the meeting runs as planned and that it yields "substantial outcomes."</s>North Korea canceled a high-level meeting Wednesday with South Korea and threatened also to call off a historic summit planned next month with the United States due to ongoing military exercises between the South and the U.S., South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea canceled a high-level meeting Wednesday with South Korea and threatened also to call off a historic summit planned next month with the United States due to ongoing military exercises between the South and the U.S., South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.

The two Koreas were set to hold a meeting later Wednesday at a border truce village to discuss setting up military and Red Cross talks aimed at reducing border tension and restarting reunions between families separated by the Korean War.

But hours before the meeting was to take place, Pyongyang canceled the meeting and also questioned whether next month’s talks between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump would happen, Yonhap reported, citing North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency.

“The United States will also have to undertake careful deliberations about the fate of the planned North Korea-U.S. summit in light of this provocative military ruckus jointly conducted with the South Korean authorities,” KCNA reported.

The two-week military exercise between the U.S. and South Korea started Friday and included about 100 warplanes, Yonhap said.

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 Kim and Trump’s summit, which had been shaping up to be a crucial moment in the global diplomatic push to resolve the nuclear standoff with the North.</s>Update 10.45pm: China has urged its ally North Korea to proceed with a historic summit between its leader, Kim Jong Un, and US president Donald Trump amid threats from Pyongyang to scrap the meeting.

Foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the sides should ensure the meeting runs as planned and yields “substantial outcomes”.

Mr Kim and Mr Trump are due to meet in Singapore on June 12, but Pyongyang has threatened to withdraw, saying it has no interest in a “one-sided” affair meant to pressure it into abandoning its nuclear weapons.

Mr Lu said the meeting was crucial to reducing tensions on the Korean Peninsula and maintaining regional peace and stability.

The North’s warning came hours after it abruptly cancelled a high-level meeting with South Korea, in protest over US-South Korean military exercises.

Earlier: North Korea has no interest in a summit with the United States if it is going to be a “one-sided” affair where it is pressured to give up its nuclear weapons, the country’s first vice foreign minister said.

Earlier North Korea cancelled a high-level meeting with South Korea and threatened to scrap the historic summit next month between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un over military exercises between Seoul and Washington.

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 is 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 Mr Kim and Mr Trump.

The statement by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) 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 Mr Kim and South Korean president Moon Jae-in, when the leaders met on their border in their countries’ third summit talks since their formal division in 1948.

A US stealth fighter jet lands as South Korea and the US conduct the Max Thunder joint military exercise (Park Chul-hog/Yonhap/AP)

KCNA said the US aircraft mobilised for the drills include nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and stealth F-22 fighter jets, two of the US military assets it has previously said are aimed at launching nuclear strikes on the North.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry said the drills will go on as planned.

“The United States must carefully contemplate the fate of the planned North Korea-US summit amid the provocative military ruckus that it’s causing with South Korean authorities,” the North said on Wednesday.

“We’ll keenly monitor how the United States and South Korean authorities will react.”

North Korea’s first vice foreign minister, Kim Kye Gwan, later released a separate statement saying Pyongyang has no interest in a “one-sided” summit.

He criticised recent comments by Mr Trump’s top security adviser John Bolton and other US officials who have been talking about how the North should follow the “Libyan model” of nuclear disarmament and provide a “complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement”.

He also took issue with US views that the North should also fully relinquish its biological and chemical weapons.

“We will appropriately respond to the Trump administration if it approaches the North Korea-US summit meeting with a truthful intent to improve relations,” he said.

“But we are no longer interested in a negotiation that will be all about driving us into a corner and making a one-sided demand for us to give up our nukes and this would force us to reconsider whether we would accept the North Korea-US summit meeting.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean president Moon Jae-in met on their border last month (Korea Summit Press Pool/AP)

Some analysts say bringing up Libya, which dismantled its rudimentary nuclear program in the 2000s in exchange for sanctions relief, would risk derailing any progress in negotiations with the North.

Kim Jong Un took power weeks after former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s gruesome death at the hands of rebel forces amid a popular uprising in October 2011. The North has frequently used Gadhafi’s death to justify its own nuclear development in the face of perceived US threats.

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 Mr 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.

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 denuclearisation” on the Korean Peninsula and pledged permanent peace between the rivals.

In Washington, the US State Department emphasised that Mr Kim had previously indicated he understood the need and purpose of the US continuing its long-planned exercises with South Korea.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the US 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,” Ms Nauert said.

Army Colonel Rob Manning said this current exercise is part of tS and South Korea’s “routine, annual training program to maintain a foundation of military readiness.”

Col 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 Col Manning.</s>North Korea has said it may pull out of a summit with US President Donald Trump if the US insists it gives up its nuclear weapons.

The highly anticipated meeting between Mr Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is due to take place on 12 June.

But in an angry statement, North Korea’s vice-foreign minister accused the US of making reckless statements and of harbouring sinister intentions.

He pointed the finger squarely at US National Security Adviser John Bolton.

“We do not hide our feeling of repugnance towards him,” Kim Kye-gwan said.

The groundbreaking agreement for Mr Kim and Mr Trump to meet came about as North Korea said it was committed to denuclearising the Korean peninsula.

Exactly what that would entail has remained unclear, but North Korea has invited foreign media to witness the dismantling of its main nuclear test site later this month.

Mr Bolton recently said North Korea could follow a “Libya model” of verifiable denuclearisation, but this alarms Pyongyang, which watched Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi give up his nuclear programme only for him to be killed by Western-backed rebels a few years later.

The BBC’s Laura Bicker in Seoul says North Korea – which had long said its nuclear arsenal is essential for its survival as a state – is now making its demands clear.</s>David Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Program (WFP), is seeking to exploit a diplomatic thaw between Pyongyang and Washington to potentially secure hundreds of millions of dollars from donor countries to dramatically expand U.N. relief operations in North Korea.

But the former Republican governor from South Carolina has encountered resistance from the White House, even as President Donald Trump prepares to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore next month.

According to two diplomatic sources, White House officials rebuffed Beasley’s appeal for funds in a meeting in late April.

The United States donated hundreds of millions of dollars to WFP’s food assistance to Pyongyang in the 1990s but began phasing out aid after the George W. Bush administration designated North Korea as part of the Axis of Evil in 2002. Today, the United States no longer contributes to the food agency’s operations in North Korea.

If the United States commits funds to food aid, U.N. officials say, other countries, including Japan and South Korea, are likely to give more generously.

Beasley, who returned recently from a visit to Pyongyang and other parts of the country, told Foreign Policy in an interview that North Koreans face a shortfall of up to 2 million metric tons of food each year.

He didn’t specify the cost of expanding the U.N. program. But filling that gap, experts say, could run to $750 million in food assistance each year.

More than 10 million of the country’s 25 million residents are undernourished, according to a 2017 U.N. report.

“The human needs are so great, and we have a severe funding shortage,” Beasley said.

“We hope that we will receive the necessary funding to ramp up in a major way. But it is up to us to show the donors the needs [of North Koreans]. The donors want to know the food is going to the intended recipient — and not supporting a military buildup.”

Trump’s White House has been reluctant to offer foreign aid, particularly to America’s adversaries. A National Security Council spokesman, Robert Palladino, would not comment directly on the question of Beasley’s contacts with the administration. But he said the United States would continue to apply pressure on North Korea until it is free of nuclear weapons.

“Weapons of mass destruction are extremely expensive. The reallocation of North Korean resources currently being used to build weapons programs would bring immense benefit to the North Korean people,” he said.

The prospects of a landmark summit between the American and North Korean leaders hit a bump on Tuesday, when North Korea reportedly threatened to cancel the June 12 summit if the U.S. and South Korea continue joint military exercises in the region. But U.S. officials said they have received no official notice of North Korea’s plans to withdraw from the talks and plan to proceed with preparations.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News Sunday that the United States would consider authorizing American companies to make private investments in a nuclear weapons-free North Korea. But he said U.S. taxpayers would not foot the bill.

“I wouldn’t look for economic aid from us,” John Bolton, the U.S. national security advisor, told CNN on Sunday. The goal, according to Bolton, is to have North Korea become a “normal nation” that can fend for itself.

Not all Republicans ruled out the idea of aid. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday that it would be the “best money we ever spent,” provided that North Korea was willing to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.

“If you could really get North Korea to give up their nuclear program, then I think there’d be a lot of support in Congress to give North Korea a better life,” he said.

At its height in the 1990s, the WFP’s relief operation spent $750 million on North Korea each year.

The agency’s aid to Pyongyang is much smaller today and includes the distribution of fortified cereals, biscuits, and nutritional supplements to about 650,000 pregnant women, young mothers, and children under the age of 5.

Funding shortfalls have plagued the U.N. relief agency. If the organization cannot secure $10 million in funding over the next six months, it will have to cut the rations to women and children, a WFP spokesperson says.

Beasley’s visit to North Korea this month was his first as the United Nations’ top food official. He met with senior North Korean officials in Pyongyang and toured WFP projects in several outlying provinces.

The visit coincided with Pompeo’s second meeting with Kim and the release of three detained U.S. citizens. The two delegations did not meet.

In the interview, Beasley said that while he saw no sign of the widespread starvation that afflicted North Koreans in the 1990s, severe malnutrition continued to pose a threat.

North Korea faces geographical, environmental, and technological challenges to meeting its population’s basic food needs, he said. Only about 20 percent of the country’s land is arable.

But Beasley was upbeat about the prospects of delivering assistance where needed. “Let me say clearly, the access our team has been granted thus far has been unprecedented,” he said. “Clearly, a new door of opportunity has been opened.”

Beasley said he pressed North Korean officials to provide more “accurate and detailed information” about the country’s needs and to ensure “improved access” for U.N. workers.

“The response was very positive. We can see clearly they want to turn a new page of history.”

Beasley is now pressing governments in Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington to step up funding for the operations.

Beasley declined to comment on his discussions with the White House except to say, “I have meetings at many houses, including the White House. Let me be clear, the United States is the No. 1 donor to the World Food Program.”

U.N. officials are still hopeful that U.S. reluctance to commit to funding food aid is merely part of its opening negotiating stance and that it may soften its position during talks. South Korea has been more receptive to Beasley’s calls for greater humanitarian aid. North Korea’s high levels of malnutrition present an existential challenge to Seoul, which may one day have to shoulder the burden of caring for North Koreans if the government should ever collapse and the two nations united.

“It is very much in the South Koreans’ interest to get more food into the country because of massive stunting and malnutrition,” said Nancy Lindborg, who ran feeding programs during the Clinton and Bush administrations.

But she cautioned that humanitarian assistance flowing into North Korea should be distributed and monitored by WFP relief officials, not given directly to North Korea’s distribution system. And any pact authorizing the resumption of a large-scale food deliveries should not be negotiated as part of a broader political pact.

“Anytime you provide human assistance as part of a political package, you risk cutting off the assistance when the politics fail,” Lindborg said. “They totally control the spigot, and they can turn it on or off depending on the politics.”</s>South Korea is offering to play the role of mediator between the U.S. and North Korea after Pyongyang threatened to call off a summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

A South Korean presidential Blue House official said on Thursday that it plans to “sufficiently convey (to the United States) what we’ve discerned about North Korea’s position and attitude… and sufficiently convey the United States’ position to North Korea,” according to Reuters.

The comments come after North Korea threatened to pull out of the upcoming summit between Trump and Kim after Pyongyang abruptly canceled a meeting with South Korean officials over denuclearization.

North Korea on Tuesday pointed to U.S.-South Korea military drills in cancelling the meeting with officials from Seoul.</s>[SEOUL] South Korea said on Thursday it would seek to mediate between the United States and North Korea after Pyongyang threatened to pull out of an unprecedented summit between its leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump on June 12 in Singapore.

North Korea on Wednesday said it might not attend the summit if Washington continues to demand it unilaterally abandon its nuclear arsenal.

Japan's Asahi newspaper on Thursday reported the United States has demanded North Korea ship some nuclear warheads, an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and other nuclear material overseas within six months.

The newspaper, citing several sources familiar with North Korean issues, said US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appeared to have told the North Korean leader when they met this month that Pyongyang might be removed from a list of state sponsors of terrorism if it ships out those nuclear items.

The Asahi also reported that if Pyongyang agrees to complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation at the planned Singapore summit, Washington was considering giving guarantees for Kim's regime.

Doubts over the US-North Korea summit arose on Wednesday when Pyongyang denounced US-South Korean military exercises as a provocation and called off high-level talks with Seoul.

Mr Trump has said it is unclear whether the summit will go ahead but he would continue to insist on denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.

South Korea's presidential Blue House said it would seek to bridge the gap between the Washington and Pyongyang.

A Blue House official said the South Korean government or President Moon Jae-in intends to more actively perform "the role of a mediator" between South Korea, the United States and North Korea.

Mr Trump will host South Korean President Moon at a summit at the White House on May 22, and the two are expected to discuss the upcoming US-North Korea summit.

The Blue House intends to "sufficiently convey (to the United States) what we've discerned about North Korea's position and attitude... and sufficiently convey the United States'position to North Korea," thereby helping to bridge the gap between their positions, the official said.

"Seeing the announced statements and responses from North Korea and the United States, we see the two parties as having a sincere and serious attitude (to stand in each other's shoes),"the official said.

South Korea intends to continue discussions with North Korea to hold high-level talks North Korea cancelled on Wednesday, Blue House said in a separate statement on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Chinese government's top diplomat, Wang Yi, said on Thursday the measures North Korea has taken to ease tension on the Korean peninsula should be acknowledged, and all other parties, especially the United States, should cherish the opportunity for peace.

Cancellation of the summit, the first between US and North Korean leaders, would deal a major blow to what would be the biggest diplomatic achievement of Mr Trump's presidency. This comes at a time when his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal has drawn criticism internationally and his move of the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem has fuelled deadly violence on the Israel-Gaza border.
North Korea cancels high-level talks with South Korea in protest of United States–South Korea joint military exercises.