US President Donald Trump cancelled next month’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Thursday, citing “tremendous anger and open hostility” in recent statements from Pyongyang.
In a letter addressed to Kim, Trump said it would be “inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting,” which was set for June 12 in Singapore.
“I was very much looking forward to being there with you,” Trump wrote in the letter.
Earlier, a senior North Korean official had said it was up to Washington to choose between talks and confrontation.
“Whether the US will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision and behaviour of the United States,” Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui said according to a statement published by North Korean state news agency KCNA.
The cancellation of the summit was “for the good of both parties, but to the detriment of the world,” Trump told Kim.
“You talk about your nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.”
The White House’s release of the Trump’s letter followed North Korea’s announcement earlier Thursday that it had destroyed its only known nuclear test site.
In what was seen as a symbolic step toward denuclearization, reporters from South Korea, the US, China, Russia and Britain were allowed to witness multiple explosions on the site in the remote north-eastern area of Punggye-ri.
International nuclear experts have not been invited to inspect the Punggye-ri weapons test site, a spokeswoman of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization said in Vienna.
“There has been no formal invitation so far,” she told dpa shortly after the reported detonation of the facilities.
Lassina Zerbo, executive secretary of the organization, said: “I see no other way we can get an agreement to close irreversibly the nuclear weapon test site of [North Korea] without involving the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.”
Trump held out the possibility to Kim of resetting the summit.
“If you change your mind having to do with this most important summit, please do not hesitate to call me or write,” he said. “The world, and North Korea in particular, has lost a great opportunity for lasting peace and great prosperity and wealth.”
Trump thanked Kim for the “beautiful gesture” of releasing three US citizens detained by Pyongyang, and wrote that “Some day, I look very much forward to meeting you.”
“I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me, and ultimately, it is only that dialogue that matters.”
The cancellation was “truly a sad moment in history,” Trump said.
At Punggye-ri in the mountainous north, used for underground tests since 2009, officials used explosives to first destroy an underground tunnel, South Korean journalists reported.
Hours later, several explosions were noted by the international journalists as two additional tunnels, barracks, observation towers and other facilities on the ground were destroyed, Yonhap reported.
“[We] expect it to serve as a chance for complete denuclearization going forward,” Noh Kyu-duk, spokesman for South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was quoted as saying.
The pledge to destroy the site came after an April 27 summit between the two Koreas, during which Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae In agreed to work toward a permanent peace treaty and the elimination of nuclear weapons on the peninsula.
North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and missile research have been a source of international tension for decades.
dpa
