Pyongyang has threatened to scrap the US-North Korean leadership meeting and make the US face “an appalling tragedy.” The remarks came in response to Vice President Mike Pence’s warning on a Libyan scenario for the country.
“As a person involved in the U.S. affairs, I cannot suppress my surprise at such ignorant and stupid remarks gushing out from the mouth of the U.S. vice-president,” North Korean vice-minister of Foreign Affairs Choe Son-hui said as cited by state media on Thursday.
“We could surmise more than enough what a political dummy he is as he is trying to compare the DPRK, a nuclear weapon state, to Libya that had simply installed a few items of equipment and fiddled around with them.”
US officials are apparently continuing with President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” approach despite the recent relief in tensions on the Korean peninsula. On Monday, Pence said that if the North’s leader Kim Jong-un tries to play Trump and fails to make a deal on its nukes, it will “only end like the Libyan model ended.”
He was not the first high ranking official to mention Libya while speaking about the North’s denuclearization. Earlier US national security adviser John Bolton brought up the “Libyan model” of giving up the nuclear arsenal as well.
Yet, less than 10 years after Tripoli surrendered its nuclear research materials to the US in 2003, its government was overthrown, with the help of NATO-led intervention.
“In view of the remarks of the U.S. high-ranking politicians who have not yet woken up to this stark reality and compare the DPRK to Libya that met a tragic fate, I come to think that they know too little about us,” the vice-minister said.
She also noted that Pence had failed to consider the “terrible consequences” of his statement, adding that his country may “taste an appalling tragedy it has neither experienced nor even imagined up to now” for it.
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