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.

In a pre-dawn dispatch, the North's official Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA, 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 last month's summit between Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, when the leaders met at the border in their countries' third summit talks since their formal division in 1948.

"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. "We'll keenly monitor how the United States and South Korean authorities will react."

Kim Dong-yub, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Institute for Far Eastern Studies, said the North isn't trying to undermine the Trump-Kim talks. The North's reaction is more like a "complaint over Trump's way of playing the good cop and bad cop game with (Secretary of State Mike) Pompeo and Bolton," he said.

Seoul's Unification Ministry, which is responsible for inter-Korean affairs, called North Korea's move "regrettable" and urged a quick return to talks. The Defense Ministry said the drills with the United States would go on as planned.

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. Much larger springtime drills took place last month without the North's typically fiery condemnation or accompanying weapons tests, though Washington and Seoul toned down those exercises.

The KCNA dispatch 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. Seoul has said F-22s are involved in the drills, but has not confirmed whether B-52s are taking part.

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 North or South Korea that would change that.

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

U.S. Army Col. Rob Manning said the 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," Manning said.

Washington and Seoul delayed the earlier round of springtime drills 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.

Despite Kim's outreach, some experts were skeptical about whether he would completely give up a nuclear program that he had pushed so hard to build. The North previously vowed to continue nuclear development unless the United States pulls its 28,500 troops out of South Korea and withdraws 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.

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.

Associated Press writers Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul and Lolita Baldor, Josh Lederman and Catherine Lucey in Washington contributed to this report.</s>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Thursday that it was moving forward with plans for a summit meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore on June 12, despite North Korea’s threat to pull out of the summit if the U.S. insists it give up its nuclear program.

“Nothing has changed on our end,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters. “This was an invitation that North Korea offered, and that we’ve accepted, and we’re continuing to move forward in those preparations.”</s>The White House said Wednesday that it "fully expected" threats by North Korea to potentially cancel Kim Jong Un 's meeting with President Donald Trump . In a series of statements this week, the country's state media agency said Kim was considering pulling out of the summit due to joint air force drills taking place in South Korea."This is something that we fully expected," press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters at the White House today. "The president is very used to being ready for tough negotiations and if they want to meet, we'll be ready, and if they don't, that's okay, too."Hours later, President Trump reacted to the statements for the first time when pressed by reporters in an Oval Office meeting alongside Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev."We haven't been notified at all," Trump said. "We'll have to see. We haven't seen anything, we haven't heard anything. We will see what happens."North Korea's announcement, issued Tuesday evening by state news organization KCNA, appeared to catch the State Department off guard, with spokesperson Heather Nauert telling reporters the U.S. had not heard from North Korea directly before the announcement.Earlier Wednesday, Sanders clarified the administration's plan if the summit were to be canceled."We're going to continue with the campaign of maximum pressure if that's the case," Sanders said. "But like I said if they want to meet, the president will certainly be ready and we'll be prepared. If not, that's okay."Sanders also appeared to distance the Trump administration from comments its national security adviser, John Bolton, made this past Sunday regarding the denuclearization model being pursued on the Korean peninsula.Bolton has repeatedly said that the administration plans to pursue "the Libya model," which calls for a strict monitoring and inspection plan to ensure North Korea has denuclearized.North Korea's first vice minister for foreign affairs, Kim Kye Gwan, directly criticized the model in a lengthy statement Wednesday night, accusing U.S. officials of "provoking" the country with "unbridled remarks.""High-ranking officials of the White House and the Department of State including Bolton, White House national security adviser, are letting loose the assertions of so-called Libya mode of nuclear abandonment," the statement read."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," the statement added. "It is ridiculous comedy to see the Trump administration, claiming to take a different road from the previous administration, still clings to the outdated policy on the DPRK."Sanders told reporters gathered in the North Lawn driveway at the White House Wednesday that the Libya model is not a part of any administration policy she's aware of."I haven't seen that as part of any discussions, I'm not aware that that's a model that we're using," Sanders said. "Again, this is the President Trump model. He's gonna run this the way he sees fit. We're 100 percent confident -- as we've said many times before, as you all know, you're aware -- he's the best negotiator, and we're very confident in that."The episode has drawn parallels to the breakdown in the Bush Administration's nuclear negotiations with North Korea in 2008. At the time, Kim's father, Kim Jong Il , balked at requests for a strict inspections program similar to what President George W. Bush had utilized to eliminate Libya's nuclear program in 2003 and 2004."There's not a cookie-cutter model on how this works," Sanders said in response to Bolton's championing of that model.</s>North Korea is rapidly moving the goal posts for next month’s summit between leader Kim Jong Un and President Trump, saying the United States must stop insisting that the North “unilaterally” abandon its nuclear weapons program and stop talking about a Libya-style solution to the standoff.

The latest warning, delivered by former North Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Gye Gwan on Wednesday, 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 cast doubt on the planned summit by protesting 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 Gye Gwan, now vice foreign minister, said in a statement carried Wednesday by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

“However, if the U.S. 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-U.S. summit,” he said, using the abbreviation for North Korea’s official name. He also questioned the sequencing of denuclearization first, compensation second.

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

“The U.S. and South Korea hold an exercise, which contains some strategic strike elements to it. U.S. officials can’t seem to get on the same page regarding denuclearization 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 Korea frees 3 American prisoners ahead of a planned Trump-Kim summit ]

Trump and Kim Jong Un are due to meet in Singapore on June 12, which would be the first meeting between a North Korean leader and a sitting U.S. president.

Trump and his top aides, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton, have repeatedly said the United States wants the “complete verifiable irreversible denuclearization of North Korea” — a high standard that Pyongyang has previously resisted.

Bolton, known for his sharply hawkish views, has said that North Korea must commit to a disarmament similar to “Libya 2004.” He was undersecretary of state for arms control in 2004, when Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi agreed to give up his nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.

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

North Korea lashed out at Bolton, whom the regime derided as “human scum” when 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 move[s] 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 Gye Gwan said.

The “world knows too well that our country is neither Libya nor Iraq, which have met a miserable fate,” Kim Gye Gwan said, harking back to North Korea’s 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 toward him,” the vice minister said.

In negotiations over the years, North Korea has repeatedly threatened to walk out over disagreements — and has on occasion actually walked out. In that respect, Wednesday’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 denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” phrasing that was seen as code for mutual arms reduction.

Earlier Wednesday, KCNA protested the joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises taking place in the southern half of the peninsula, threatening to pull out of the summit over this “provocation.”

North Korea said barely a word about the drills during computer simulation exercises that took place through April, and the South Korean and U.S. militaries had scaled back and played down the exercises to avoid antagonizing the North.

But the two-week-long Max Thunder drills between the two countries’ air forces, an annual event that began Friday and involves about 100 warplanes, including B-52 bombers and F-15K jets, have clearly struck a nerve.

“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,” the KCNA report said.

[Something’s going on at North Korea’s nuclear test site. Maybe it really is closing. ]

Max Thunder has been held annually in the spring for about 10 years. It features the United States and South Korea flying strike aircraft together from air bases in South Korea and Japan to practice air-to-air combat. About 1,000 U.S. troops and 500 South Koreans were involved last year, according to a U.S. military statement published at the time.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry said the Max Thunder drills would carry on as planned and that there is no disagreement on this between South Korea and the United States.

“The Max Thunder drill is training for pilot skill enhancement, not an attack drill or implementation of an operation plan,” Defense Ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyun-soo said.

A Pentagon spokesman, Army Col. Robert Manning III, said Tuesday that the exercises are part of the U.S.-South Korean alliance’s “routine, annual training program to maintain a foundation of military readiness.”

Manning said the purpose of the exercises is to enhance the alliance’s ability to defend South Korea. “While we will not discuss specifics, the defensive nature of these combined exercises has been clear for many decades and has not changed,” he said.

North Korea, as it has in the past, disagreed. “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,” KCNA said.

By mentioning the Panmunjom Declaration, North Korea was referring to the agreement signed last month by Kim and Moon following their historic summit.

They agreed to work to turn the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War in 1953 into a peace treaty that would officially bring the war to a close, and to pursue the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula.

Trump administration officials said they were continuing to work toward the June 12 summit between Trump and Kim.

“The United States will look at what North Korea has said independently and continue to coordinate closely with our allies,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the United States has not received notice of any change or cancellation. She said the government is continuing to plan for the summit and is confident that Kim understands the need for the exercises.

At the same time as it threatened to scuttle the summit with Trump, North Korea canceled talks with South Korean officials that had been scheduled for Wednesday, less than 24 hours after agreeing to them.

North Korea had said it would send five senior officials to the border village of Panmunjom for meetings with South Korean officials, the first such talks since the April 27 inter-Korean summit.

They were due to discuss some of the infrastructure aid that South Korea would provide to North Korea as part of their broader detente. The North was going to send Ri Son Kwon, who leads the North Korean agency in charge of inter-Korean exchanges and was present at the summit, while the South was going to send senior officials from the Transport Ministry and forest service.

Min Joo Kim in Seoul and Dan Lamothe and Anne Gearan in Washington contributed to this article.

Read more:

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news</s>The United States is still hopeful about a planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un but President Donald Trump is prepared for a tough negotiation process, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Wednesday. North Korea threw next month’s summit between Kim and Trump into doubt on Wednesday, threatening weeks of diplomatic progress by saying it may reconsider if Washington insists it unilaterally gives up its nuclear weapons.

“We’re still hopeful that the meeting will take place and we’ll continue down that path but at the same time we’ve been prepared that these could be tough negotiations,” Sanders said in an interview with Fox News.

“The president is ready if the meeting takes place. If it doesn’t, we’ll continue the maximum pressure campaign that’s been ongoing.”

Read | North Korea says may reconsider summit with Donald Trump, suspends talks with South

Sanders said the comments from North Korea were “not something that is out of the ordinary in these types of operations.”

“The president’s fully prepared and fully ready to carry on in these conversations both leading up to and if the meeting takes place,” she said. “He’ll be there and he’ll be ready.”

According to North Korea’s official KCNA news agency, Pyongyang’s first vice minister of foreign affairs, Kim Kye Gwan, specifically criticized US national security adviser John Bolton, who has called for the North to quickly give up its nuclear arsenal in a deal that mirrors Libya’s abandonment of its weapons of mass destruction.

Sanders played down those concerns. “I haven’t seen that as part of any discussions so I’m not aware that that’s a model that we’re using,” she told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. The Trump-Kim meeting is scheduled for June 12 in Singapore.

For all the latest World News, download Indian Express App</s>“We will see what happens,” President Trump told reporters after North Korea threatened to cancel the summit with Kim Jong Un over Trump’s call for the country to give up its nuclear weapons.</s>President Donald Trump today said the US has not been notified about North Korea’s threat to cancel his historic summit with Kim Jong-un next month. North Korea has threatened to abandon planned talks between Kim and Trump in June if Washington insists on pushing it “into a corner” on nuclear disarmament. “No decision. We haven’t been notified at all (about the threat). We’ll have to see,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We haven’t seen anything. We haven’t heard anything. We will see what happens, whatever is,” Trump told reporters as he welcomed the president of Uzbekistan to the White House.

Asked if Kim is bluffing, he replied, “We’ll see what happens.” Asked if he will still insist on the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, Trump said, “Yes”. A statement published by the state-run Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) said North Korea would never accept economic assistance from the US in exchange for unilaterally abandoning its nuclear programme.

In the meeting on June 12 in Singapore, the two countries were expected to discuss ways to implement their leaders’ recent agreements to reduce military tensions along their heavily fortified border and improve their overall ties.

Reacting to the reports from Pyongyang, the White House earlier said it was “still hopeful” the summit will proceed despite North Korea’s threat to cancel it. The State Department also said it was going ahead with preparations for the summit as planned earlier.</s>President Donald Trump said Wednesday the U.S. hasn’t been notified about North Korea’s threat to cancel his planned summit with Kim Jong Un next month.

"We'll see" if NK summit still on: Trump (Reuters/Inform)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday the U.S. hasn’t been notified about North Korea’s threat to cancel his planned summit with Kim Jong Un next month.

North Korea threatened earlier in the day to scrap the historic summit between Trump and Kim, saying it has no interest in a “one-sided” affair meant to pressure the North to abandon its nuclear weapons. Trump maintained that he’ll still insist on the country’s denuclearization should the summit go on.

“We haven’t been notified at all” about the threat, Trump said as he welcomed the president of Uzbekistan to the White House.

He added: “We haven’t seen anything. We haven’t heard anything. We will see what happens.”

The warning from North Korea’s first vice foreign minister came 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.

National Security Adviser John Bolton told Fox News Radio Wednesday that “we are trying to be both optimistic and realistic at the same time.”

Bolton, who was called out by name by the North for saying that the U.S. is seeking to seek an outcome similar to Libya’s unilateral nuclear disarmament, said the personal attack raised question of “whether this really is a sign that that they’re not taking our objective of denuclearization seriously.”

Press secretary Sarah Sanders said earlier Wednesday that preparations for the summit were ongoing despite the cancellation threat and that Trump is “hopeful” the meeting will still take place.

“If it doesn’t we’ll continue the maximum pressure campaign that’s been ongoing,” she told Fox & Friends.

Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden said he is concerned that talks are “really being oversimplified” by the White House.

“This is not a like condo deal where two people sit down and hash out a number of outstanding issues and then they say ‘Well, some lawyers can write it up,’” he said.

AP writers Jill Colvin and Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.</s>When North Korea suddenly threw a historic summit with the United States into question Wednesday, it cited — five times — the fate of another country and another leader, half a world away, as an example of why no one should trust American efforts to disarm another nation.The country was Libya , and the leader was Moammar Gadhafi, who made a bad bet that he could swap his nascent nuclear program for economic integration with the West. That deal, executed by the Bush administration nearly 15 years ago, is a footnote to American histories of that era.But it has always loomed large for the North Koreans.The planned June 12 meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been regarded by disarmament advocates as an opportunity to end decades of animosity between North Korea and the United States.But in the mind of Trump’s new national security adviser, John R. Bolton, who was an architect of the Libya deal, that is the model of how things should play out as the two leaders meet: Complete nuclear disarmament, in return for the promise of economic integration. Bolton said as much last weekend.In issuing its threat to back out of the summit meeting, the North referred to Bolton’s comments, calling them a “Libya mode of nuclear abandonment.”So why is the Libya model suddenly becoming a sticking point in the meeting between Trump and Kim?In 2003, Gadhafi saw the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, and may well have concluded he was next. In a lengthy, secret set of negotiations with Britain and the United States, he agreed to voluntarily hand over the equipment he had purchased from A.Q. Khan, a leader of the Pakistani nuclear program. North Korea and Iran had also been customers of Khan, who was later placed under house arrest after his activities were exposed.The Libya material was flown out of the country, much of it placed at an American weapons laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. When President George W. Bush announced the deal, he made a clear reference to North Korea and Iran when he said, “I hope other leaders will find an example” in Libya’s action.What happened less than a decade later might be at the heart of what Kim appears to fear.The United States and its European allies began a military action against Libya in 2011 to prevent Gadhafi’s threatened massacre of civilians. President Barack Obama acceded to arguments from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to join the European-led action.But no one in the Situation Room debated what message the decision to turn on Gadhafi might send to other countries the United States was trying to persuade to relinquish their weapons, according to interviews conducted later with more than a half-dozen people engaged in the discussion.The Libya intervention allowed anti-government rebels to put Gadhafi on the run, and months later they pulled him from a ditch and killed him. Since then, Libya has devolved into a dysfunctional state. And North Korea has taken notice.North Korea’s fear of meeting the same fate as Libya — or maybe more specifically its leader meeting the same fate as Gadhafi — has appeared to factor into North Korea’s thinking about its own weapons program for years.In 2011, after the United States and allies launched airstrikes in Libya, North Korea’s foreign minister said the denuclearization of the North African nation had been an “an invasion tactic to disarm the country.”After Gadhafi was killed, the narrative in North Korea became clear: Had he not surrendered his nuclear program, North Korean officials said, he might still be alive.In 2016, shortly after North Korea conducted a nuclear test, its state-run news outlet, the Korean Central News Agency, made direct reference to Libya and Iraq. “History proves that powerful nuclear deterrence serves as the strongest treasured sword for frustrating outsiders’ aggression,” the agency said.“The Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq and the Gaddafi regime in Libya could not escape the fate of destruction after being deprived of their foundations for nuclear development and giving up nuclear programs of their own accord,” it said.But North Korea was also clear to draw a line between itself and the two nations. Its statement on Wednesday said it was off base to suggest that the “dignified state” of North Korea could share the same destiny as Libya or Iraq, which “collapsed due to yielding the whole of their countries to big powers.”“The world knows too well that our country is neither Libya nor Iraq, which have met miserable fates,” the statement said. The North made explicit reference to a homegrown achievement that Gadhafi never neared: It had already become a nuclear-armed country.Unlike North Korea, Libya was not actually a nuclear weapons state. During inspections in 2003, the Americans discovered Libya had centrifuges that could be used to produce highly enriched uranium — fuel for a bomb.“It is absolutely absurd to dare compare the DPRK, a nuclear weapon state, to Libya, which had been at the initial state of nuclear development,” the North Korean statement said, using the initials for the country’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.North Korea has tested six nuclear weapons, and U.S. intelligence agencies believe it has 20 to 60 more, as well as intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking the United States.North Korea’s statement Wednesday also made direct reference to Bolton.In his first televised interviews after becoming national security adviser last month, Bolton told “Face the Nation” on CBS and “Fox News Sunday” that Libya’s denuclearization was what he envisioned when moving ahead with North Korea talks.“We have very much in mind the Libya model from 2003, 2004,” he said on Fox. “There are obviously differences. The Libyan program was much smaller, but that was basically the agreement that we made.”When a reporter asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, specifically about the Libya model and if the administration’s approach to North Korea would be the same, she backed away from Bolton’s comparison.“I haven’t seen that as part of any discussions, so I am not aware that that’s a model that we are using,” Sanders said Wednesday. “There is not a cookie cutter on how this works.”</s>North Korea threatened to walk away from its meeting with President Donald Trump next month if the U.S. made a “one-sided demand” for the regime to surrender its nuclear weapons.

North Korea’s first vice foreign minister, Kim Kye Gwan, said the regime was disappointed by recent comments from the U.S., according to a statement published Wednesday by the state-run Korean Central News Agency. The statement cited remarks by National Security Adviser John Bolton urging a “Libya model” for the rapid dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

“If the Trump administration takes an approach to the DPRK-U.S. summit with sincerity for improved DPRK-U.S. relations, it will receive a deserved response from us,” Kim Kye Gwan said, using an acronym for North Korea’s formal name. “However, if the U.S. 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-U.S. summit.”

Earlier Wednesday, North Korea abruptly canceled talks with South Korea and warned the U.S. to “think twice” about Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un scheduled for next month in Singapore. The moves undercut the optimism after Kim agreed to discuss his nuclear weapons program in a first-of-its-kind meeting.

Tensions have built in recent weeks over the steps needed for the U.S. to ease sanctions against North Korea: The Trump administration wants Kim to give up his weapons before getting anything in return, while Kim favors a more phased approach. Stocks tied to expectations of a resumption in inter-Korean business fell on Wednesday.

An earlier KCNA dispatch announcing the decision to suspend “indefinitely” talks with South Korea, cited the allies’ “Max Thunder” military drills and other “improper acts” by authorities in Seoul. “There is a limit in showing goodwill and offering opportunity,” the report said.

The later comments from Kim Kye Gwan indicated broader dissatisfaction with the U.S. approach to talks, and Bolton’s comparisons to Libya in particular.

Kim Jong Un and Bolton Learned Different Lessons From Libya

The last remnants of Libya’s nuclear program were loaded onto an aircraft in 2009 and shipped out of the country, part of a U.S.-brokered deal with dictator Muammar Qaddafi to disarm in return for sanctions relief. Two years later, NATO-backed rebels brutally killed him.

“It is absolutely absurd to dare compare the DPRK, a nuclear weapon state, to Libya which had been at the initial stage of nuclear development,” the vice foreign minister said. “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.”

— With assistance by Andy Sharp, and David Tweed
North Korea warns that it might cancel talks with the United States if the U.S. keeps insisting that North Korea will "unilaterally" abandon its nuclear weapons program, similar to the disarmament of Libya. The White House says it is hopeful the planned summit will still happen.