US President, Donald Trump has announced the cancellation of the much expected talks with North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Un .

In cancelling the talks, Trump said he was waiting for the North Korean leader to engage in constructive dialogue and actions. He added that until that happened, US sanctions against that country would continue.

North Korea had earlier on Thursday issued its most direct threat yet to pull out of the much anticipated summit with the United States if Washington continued with what it called ‘unlawful and outrageous acts’.

In a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, Choe Son-Hui,  North Korean Vice Foreign Minister said the fate of the June 12 summit in Singapore between Leader Kim Jong-Un and U.S. President, Donald Trump rested entirely on the shoulders of the United States.

“Whether the U.S. 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,” Choe said.

“In case the U.S. offends against our goodwill and clings to unlawful and outrageous acts, I will put forward a suggestion to our supreme leadership for reconsidering the DPRK-U.S. summit,” she added.

With less than three weeks to go before the first-ever planned summit between sitting North Korean and American leaders, both sides had in recent days hinted that the landmark event might be cancelled.

The odds against the meeting being held took a turn for the worse Tuesday when Trump, who was hosting South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the White House, said there was a very substantial chance that the meeting would not work out.

”There are certain conditions that we want, and I think we’ll get those conditions. And if we don’t, we don’t have the meeting. If it doesn’t happen, maybe it will happen later. Maybe it will happen at a different time,” Trump had said.

Trump however held out hope that if the June 12 meeting in Singapore was cancelled, it could be held at another point in time, noting that he believed Kim was “very serious” about denuclearization of his country.

Choe’s remarks came a week after another Vice Foreign Minister, Kim Kye-Gwan threatened to walk away from the summit, saying that Pyongyang was not interested in any talks in which it is coerced into relinquishing what it has called its ‘treasured nuclear sword’.

Choe pointed to a Monday interview with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence in which he mentioned a ‘Libya-style’ model for denuclearizing North Korea, while also noting that the option of using military force to rid the country of its nuclear arsenal had ‘never came off’ the table — despite a growing sense of detest.

“U.S. Vice President Pence has made unbridled and impudent remarks that North Korea might end like Libya, military option for North Korea never came off the table, the U.S. needs complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization, and so on. 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,” Choe said.

She further warned against comparing North Korea, which has tested sophisticated nuclear bombs and advanced long-range missiles, to Libya, which she said met a tragic fate while also warning of an ‘appalling tragedy’ for the U.S.

North Korea has routinely pointed to U.S. military interventions as justification for its nuclear weapons program, citing in 2013 “the tragic consequences in those countries which abandoned halfway their nuclear programs” — an allusion, in particular, to Libya and its late leader, Muammar Gaddafi, who was shot dead almost immediately after his capture by rebels in 2011.

Gaddafi had agreed in 2003 to discontinue his country’s decades-old nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions and a return to the international community.

Now, many observers believe President Trump announced the cancellation of the talks to avoid a situation where the North Korean leader would be the first to announce a cancellation and put the American government in an embarrassing situation.