North Korea has threatened to cancel the much anticipated summit between its leader, Kim Jong-Un and President Donald Trump of the United States over Washington’s insistence that Pyongyang unilaterally abandons its nuclear programme.

The latest warning which was issued by former North Korean nuclear negotiator, Kim Kye Gwan on Wednesday fits into Pyongyang’s well-established pattern of raising the stakes in negotiations by threatening to walk out if it does not get its way.

This latest move to derail the summit slated to hold next month comes just hours after the North Korean regime cast doubts on the meeting by protesting against the two-week-long ‘Max Thunder’ joint air force drills taking place in South Korea, claiming the exercise were ruining the diplomatic mood.

Kim Kye Gwan, now North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister said in a statement that the Trump administration would receive the deserved response from Pyongyang if it approaches the summit with sincerity.

“However, if the US is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment, we will be no longer interested in such dialogue and cannot but reconsider our proceeding to the DPRK-US summit.

“This is not an expression of intention to address the issue through dialogue. It is essentially a manifestation of awful sinister moves to impose on our state the destiny of Libya or Iraq which had been collapsed due to the yielding of their countries to big powers.”

The United States would also have to undertake careful deliberations about the fate of the planned North Korea -US summit in light of this provocative military ruckus jointly conducted with the South Korean authorities,” Gwan added.

Trump and his close aides including Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser, John Bolton have repeatedly insisted that the United States wants the “complete verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of North Korea”, a high standard Pyongyang has previously protested.