US rejects China’s ‘apples to oranges’ plan to get North Korea to stop developing nukes

China’s foreign minister said on Wednesday that North Korea could curb its nuclear weapons program if the US agreed to stop conducting military drills with South Korea — something the US rejected.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi rehashed the offer, one that the US has heard from North Korea before, on Wednesday, saying that the US, South Korea, and North Korea were like two trains on a collision course.

“The question is: Are the two sides really ready for a head-on collision?” Wang told reporters, according to the Military Times. “Our priority now is to flash the red light and apply the brakes on both trains.”

But Mark Toner, the acting spokesman for the State Department, stressed that “the onus is on North Korea to take meaningful actions toward denuclearization and refrain from provocations,” saying at a press briefing that comparing the US’s transparent, planned, defensive, and 40-year-old military drills with North Korea’s 24 ballistic missile launches in 2016 was a case of “apples to oranges.”

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Featured image courtesy of Reuters