White House cancels summit due to North Korea's repeated broken promises
(Baonghean.vn) - The White House announced on May 24 that US President Donald Trump canceled a planned summit with North Korea partly because the North Korean side did not appear at preparatory meetings.
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| US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, then CIA Director, during a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Photo: Times of Israel |
Earlier in the day, Mr. Trump withdrew from a planned meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore on June 12, citing “tremendous anger and open hostility” from the Pyongyang government.
“There is a long trail of broken promises that has stopped the United States,” a senior White House official told reporters.
This person added that, in addition to opposing the joint US-South Korea military exercises, which Mr. Kim once affirmed he understood, North Korea broke its promise and did not meet with US officials last week.
During US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's second visit to Pyongyang, North Korea promised that the two sides would meet in Singapore last week to work together on logistics preparations for the summit," the official revealed.
The White House team “waited for a long time, but the North Koreans never showed up,” he said. “The North Koreans didn’t tell us anything. They just left us hanging.”
According to the same official, contrary to North Korea's commitment to allow international experts to inspect the destruction of its nuclear test site, only a group of international journalists were allowed to witness the explosions that took place a few hours before Trump's cancellation letter.
“That promise has been broken… we will not have concrete evidence that the majority of the work has been completed,” he said. “It is possible that those tunnels were designed in a way that they can still be used in the future.”
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| Trump has announced the cancellation of his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Photo: Axios |
Multiple attempts to communicate with North Korea have gone unanswered over the past week, and the first message the country sent out in a statement late on May 23 was a challenge to “meet North Korea in a meeting room or confront North Korea in a nuclear clash,” the official said.
The statement also attacked US Vice President Mike Pence, calling him a “political puppet”.
“This bizarre lack of judgment, combined with the broken promises of the past few weeks and the suspension of direct communication with the United States, shows a profound lack of trust,” the official said. “President Trump has always made it clear that he is ready to walk away from this meeting, and he has kept his word.”
He also reiterated that in his letter, Trump said he would remain open to meeting Kim in the future. “But President Trump’s overarching goal is not a meeting. It has always been the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. And the President will never compromise the safety and security of the United States or our allies,” he asserted.
