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posted by martyb on Thursday May 17 2018, @11:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the where-have-we-seen-this-before? dept.

North Korea warns it may cancel summit with Trump if it has to give up nukes

A senior North Korean official warned Wednesday that Pyongyang may cancel its summit meeting between Kim Jong Un and President Trump scheduled for June 12 in Singapore, if it is going to be pushed into giving up its nuclear arsenal.

If the Trump administration pressures Pyongyang to unilaterally abandon its nuclear weapons, North Korea would have to reconsider the summit, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

[...] The news came hours after the North canceled a high-level meeting with South Korean officials that was scheduled for Wednesday, citing a joint military exercise as the reason. In its earlier statement, KCNA claimed that the U.S. and South Korea's joint air drill, which began on Friday, was "a bid to make a preemptive airstrike at the DPRK and win the air."

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Previously: Peace Dividend?


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Thursday May 17 2018, @06:09PM (2 children)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Thursday May 17 2018, @06:09PM (#680807) Journal

    Telling the North Koreans that we plan on bombing the crap out of them even if they comply with the terms of the deal might not be the best negotiating tactic...

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  • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday May 18 2018, @02:09AM (1 child)

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Friday May 18 2018, @02:09AM (#680970) Homepage Journal

    Well, nothing has changed on North Korea that we know of. We have not been told anything, and if it does, that's fine. I think we'll probably have a very successful meeting.

    But we have not been told anything. We're just reading stories like you are. We've heard certain things from South Korea.

    But we'll see what happens. If the meeting happens, it happens. And if it doesn't, we go on to the next step.

    I want to give everybody the benefit of the doubt. I think that -- I can only say our people are literally dealing with them right now in terms of making arrangements for the meeting. So that's a lot different from what you read, but oftentimes what you read if it's not fake news, it's true. So we'll see what happens.

    We are dealing with them now. We may have the meeting. We may not have the meeting. If we don't have it, that will be very interesting. We'll see what happens. The border is still quite strong.

    I think things changed a little bit when they met with China. They met the second time. As you know, Kim Jong-un had a second meeting with China, which was a little bit of a surprise meeting. And we have many of the Chinese here today, as you know, big delegations negotiating trade, because the United States has been ripped off for many, many years by its bad trade deals. I don't blame China. I blame our leadership of this country from the past. We have been ripped off by China. An evacuation of wealth like no country has ever seen before given to another country that's rebuilt itself based on a lot of the money they've taken out of the United States. And that's not going to happen anymore.

    But there has been a big difference since they had the second meeting with President Xi. With that being said, my attitude is whatever happens happens. Either way, we're going to be in great shape.

    We'll see what happens. Look, you have to want to do it. With deals, that's what I do, is deals. And with deals, you have to have two parties that want to do it. He absolutely wanted to do it. Perhaps he doesn't want to do it. Perhaps he spoke with China. That could be right. President Xi, a friend of mine, a great guy, but he's for China and I'm for the United States, and that's the way it is, and I suspect it's never going to change.

    But I will say this, we are continuing to negotiate in terms of location, the location that's to -- where to meet, how to meet, rooms, everything else, and they've been negotiating like nothing happened. But if you read the newspapers, maybe it won't happen. I can't tell you yet. I will tell you very shortly. We're going to know very soon.

    Have you ever seen China negotiating in trade? Nobody's even seen anybody from our country even negotiate on trade -- trade with China and with other countries, I'm not just blaming China -- China's the biggest. But trade has been a total one-way street. Right outside of this nation, you take money out like it's you -- by the bucket loads into other. Whether it's the European Union, which you know so well, whether it's Japan or South Korea or -- I could name almost every single country in the world.

    We had nobody representing us. And now you have somebody that's very good at this stuff, me, representing us. And China has taken out hundreds of billions of dollars a year from the United States. And I explained to President Xi we can't do that anymore, we just can't do that anymore. It's a much different situation.

    But with all the years and all the years, you've never seen people come over from China to work on a trade deal.

    Now, will that be successful? I tend to doubt it. The reason I doubt it is because China's become very spoiled. The European Union has become very spoiled, other countries have become very spoiled, because they always got 100% of whatever they wanted from the United States.

    But we can't allow that to happen anymore. We're an incredible country. We have incredible potential. The potential we have is incredible.

    But we lost $800 billion on trade last year, if you add it all up. Of which, China was around the $500 billion mark. So we lost $800 billion, can you believe that, is that an amazing thing to even think about? We lost $800 billion on trade -- we're not going to be doing that any longer.

    ZTE was a company that I spoke to with President Xi. He asked me if I'd take a look at that because it was very harmful to them in terms of their jobs and probably other things. And I certainly said I would -- he asked me to do it and I would do that -- I would certainly -- out of great respect -- I like him, he like me, we have a great relationship. He asked me if I'd look at ZTE -- don't forget, it was my administration with my full knowledge that put very, very strong clamps on ZTE. It wasn't anybody else, it wasn't President Obama. It wasn't President Bush. It was me.

    I put very strong clamps on ZTE. They did very bad things to our country. They did very bad things to our economy. The one thing I will say, they also buy a large portion of their parts for the phones that they make -- and they're the fourth largest company in terms of that industry -- they buy those parts from the United States. That's a lot of business.

    So we have a lot of companies that won't be selling those parts. But the President of China, President Xi, asked me to look at it. I said I would look at it. But anything we do with ZTE is always -- it's just a small component of the overall deal.

    I can only tell you this, we're going to come out fine with China. Hopefully China's going to be happy -- I think we will be happy. And, as the expression goes, when you're losing $500 billion a year on trade you can't lose the trade war, you've already lost it.

    We've had horrible representatives in this country that have allowed other countries to get away with murder. And those days are gone, those days are over.

    So we just want fairness for the workers of this country and for the United States. That's what's going to happen, OK? I'll let you know about, as time goes by, we'll let you know. As of this moment everything we know -- I mean North Korea's actually talking to us about times and everything else as though nothing happened.

    Will it happen? Will we be going on that very special date and can some great things happen? You know, we're going to be looking at it very soon.

    Well, the Libyan model isn't a model that we have at all when we're thinking of North Korea. In Libya, we decimated that country. That country was decimated. There was no deal to keep Qaddafi. The Libyan model that was mentioned was a much different deal.

    This would be with Kim Jong-un something where he'd be there. He'd be in his country. He'd be running his country. His country would be very rich. His people are tremendously industrious. If you look at South Korea -- this would be, really, a South Korean model in terms of their industry, in terms of what they do. They're hardworking incredible people.

    But the Libyan model was a much different model. We decimated that country. We never said to Qaddafi, "oh, we're going to give you protection, we're going to give you military strength, we're going to give you all of these things." We went in and decimated him. And we did the same thing with Iraq. Now, whether or not we should have, I could tell you, I was against it from the beginning, because look what we have right now. We have spent $7 trillion -- can you believe that -- $7 trillion in the Middle East, right out the window. You might as well throw the money right out the window. And we've done a lot of infrastructure. We just had airports approved. You saw that. A lot of things are happening. But we spent $7 trillion in the Middle East, and look where we are right now. It's pretty sad.

    But the model, if you look at that model with Qaddafi, that was a total decimation. We went in there to beat him. Now that model would take place if we don't make a deal, most likely. But if we make a deal, I think Kim Jong-un is going to be very, very happy. I really believe he's going to very happy. But this is just the opposite.

    And I think when John Bolton made that statement, he was talking about if we're going to be having a problem, because we cannot let that country have nukes. We just can't do it. So that's the way it's meant. It's really just the opposite. Because if you look -- again, if you look at Syria, that was a total decimation.

    I'm willing to do -- we're willing to do a lot. And he's willing to, I think, do a lot also. And I think we'll actually have a good relationship, assuming we have the meeting and assuming something comes of it. And he'll get protections that will be very strong.

    Syria never had protections. If you look at Syria -- if you look at -- or if you look anywhere around the Middle East, you look at Iraq, you look at Libya, with Libya certainly they didn't have protection. They had the exact opposite. That was absolute decimation. And that's what we planned to do, and that's what we did.

    We're going to say that he will have very adequate protection. And we'll see how it all turns out.

    I think this, the best thing he could ever do is to make a deal. I have a feeling, however, that for various reasons, maybe including trade, because they've never had this problem before -- China has never had this problem with us -- it could very well be that he's influencing Kim Jong-un. We'll see what happens. Meaning the president of China, President Xi could be influencing Kim Jong-un.

    But we'll see. That's just a -- look, if you remember a few weeks ago, all of a sudden out of nowhere, Kim Jong-un went to China to say "hello again" a second time to President Xi. I think they were dedicating an aircraft carrier, paid for largely by the United States.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 18 2018, @03:00AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 18 2018, @03:00AM (#680981)

      Can we have a -1 Bloviating mod please?