North Korea Says Won’t Meet Again With U.S.

Date: 06 October 2019 - 21:31

News ID: ۷۱۳۹۵

SEOUL, South Korea (AP/AFP) — North Korea said Sunday that it won’t meet again with the United States unless it abandons its "hostile policy” against the North, as the two countries offered different takes on their weekend nuclear negotiations in Sweden.
After their first talks in more than seven months in Stockholm on Saturday, the chief North Korean nuclear negotiator said the talks broke down "entirely because the U.S. has not discarded its old stance and attitude” and came to the negotiating table with an "empty hand.” But the U.S. said the two sides had "good discussions” that it intends to build on in two weeks.
On Sunday night, the North’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement accusing the U.S. of trying to mislead public opinion and "spreading a completely ungrounded story that both sides are open to meet” again.
The statement said the Stockholm talks "made us think they have no political will to improve (North Korea)-U.S. relations and may be abusing the bilateral relations for their own partisan interests” at home.
It said North Korea isn’t willing to hold "such sickening negotiations” as those in Stockholm until the U.S. takes "a substantial step to make complete and irreversible withdrawal of the hostile policy toward” the North.
It said the U.S. policy "threatens the security” of North Korea and "hampers the rights to existence and development of its people.”
North Korea has said it has no other option but to develop nuclear weapons to cope with what it calls a U.S. plot to invade the country. The North has also said rounds of U.S.-led sanctions imposed over its nuclear and missile programs are stifling its economy.
Early last year, North Korea entered talks with the U.S. over the fate of its advancing nuclear arsenal in return for political and economic benefits from the U.S.
Saturday’s talks were the first between the sides since the February breakdown of the second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam. The two leaders held a brief, impromptu meeting at the Korean border in late June and agreed to restart diplomacy.
The two leaders adopted a vaguely-worded document on the "complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula" at their first summit in June last year, but little progress has since been made.
On Wednesday, North Korea claimed to have entered a new phase in its defense capability with Wednesday's test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile -- the most provocative since Pyongyang began dialogue with Washington in 2018.
Trump has said he sees no problem with a string of short-range missile tests conducted previously by North Korea, while insisting his personal ties with the North's leader remain good.
North Korea is banned from ballistic missile launches by the United Nations Security Council resolutions.
The Security Council is expected to hold closed-door talks early next week on the latest test at the request of Britain, France and Germany, diplomats said.