Pyongyang, NORTH KOREA
North
Korea said Sunday that it won’t meet with the United States for more “sickening
negotiations” unless it abandons its “hostile policy” against the North, as the
two countries offered different takes on their weekend nuclear talks in Sweden.
North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un walks to greet US President Donald Trump at the Military Demarcation Line that divides North and South Korea, in the Demilitarized zone on June 30, 2019. |
After
their first talks in more than seven months in Stockholm on Saturday, the
chief North Korean nuclear negotiator said the discussions
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 with
more talks in two weeks.
On Sunday
night, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement accusing the U.S. of
trying to mislead the public 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.
The
statement didn’t say which U.S. policies it was referring to. But North Korea
has previously accused the United States of plotting an invasion of the country
and maintained that U.S.-led sanctions against the North are stifling its
economy.
Kim Myong
Gil, the main North Korean negotiator at the Stockholm talks, said that since
the first summit between U.S. President Donald
Trump and North Korean leader Kim
Jong Un in Singapore in June 2018, the U.S. has been
threatening his country with fresh unilateral sanctions and military exercises
with South Korea.
When it
entered talks with the U.S. last year, North Korea said it was willing to deal
away its advancing nuclear arsenal in return for outside political and economic
benefits. But many foreign experts doubt whether North Korea would completely
abandon a nuclear program that it has built after decades of struggle.
Before
the Singapore talks, North Korea had long said it would denuclearize only if
the U.S. withdraws its 28,500 troops from South Korea, ends military drills
with the South and takes other steps to guarantee the North’s security.
Saturday’s
talks were the first between the sides since the second Trump-Kim summit in
Vietnam in February collapsed due to squabbling over how much sanctions relief
should be given to North Korea in return for dismantling its main nuclear
complex. The two leaders held a brief, impromptu meeting at the Korean border
in late June and agreed to restart diplomacy.
State
Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said the chief North Korean negotiator’s
comments about Saturday’s talks did “not reflect the content or the spirit” of
the “good discussions” that took place over 8 ½ hours. She said the U.S.
delegation “previewed a number of new initiatives that would allow us to make
progress in each of the four pillars” of a joint statement issued after Trump
and Kim’s first summit in Singapore in June 2018.
Ortagus
also said the U.S. accepted an invitation from Sweden to return to Stockholm in
two weeks to continue talks. Because the U.S. does not have official diplomatic
relations with North Korea, Sweden has often acted as a bridge between
Washington and Pyongyang.
Kim Myong
Gil, the North Korean negotiator, said the North proposed a suspension of talks
until December. He said North Korea also made it clear that the two countries
can discuss the North’s next denuclearization steps if the United States “sincerely
responds” to previous measures taken by Pyongyang, including the suspension of
nuclear and long-range missile tests and the closing of its underground nuclear
testing site.
North
Korea has demanded the United States come up with mutually acceptable proposals
to salvage the nuclear diplomacy by the end of this year. Kim Myong Gil said
whether North Korea will lift its self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and
long-range missile tests is completely up to the United States.
“The fate
of the future (North Korea)-U.S. dialogue depends on the U.S. attitude, and the
end of this year is its deadline,” the North Korean Foreign Ministry statement
said. - AP
No comments:
Post a Comment