North Korea to US: We are not interested in talks aimed at appeasing us
North Korea rebuffs a recent offer by the United States to resume bilateral talks, saying accepting such negotiations would only help Washington pass a Pyongyang deadline for the former to adopt a more flexible approach.
The proposal came through American negotiator Stephen Biegun to his North Korean counterpart Kim Myong Gil through a third country. It urged that the countries resume their discussions following three rounds of failed talks, which started in Singapore last year and was followed up in Vietnam’s capital Hanoi and Stockholm.
The North has given the US until the end of the year to ease its stance towards the country.
On Thursday, the North Korean negotiator called Biegun's proposal a "sinister aim of appeasing us in a bid to pass with ease" Pyongyang's deadline.
"We have no willingness to have such negotiations," the Korean official asserted.
The Singapore talks came on Washington’s initiative against a backdrop of drawn-out sheer hostility, marked by fiery exchanges between the countries.
After the Hanoi talks, Trump even paid a “surprise” visit to the North as he was staying for a visit in South Korea and became the first US president to take a few steps into the North Korean soil.
However, all the apparent US attempts at rapprochement have fallen far short of Pyongyang’s demands that Washington lift its punishing sanctions against it and halt its joint military maneuvers with the South.
The US has conditioned such measures on the North’s denuclearizing first.
US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said on Wednesday that he was open to changes in the US military activity in South Korea.
Kim Yong Chol, a senior North Korean official, who led negotiations in the run-up to the Vietnam summit, said late on Thursday that he hoped Esper meant to completely halt the joint drills.
"But if ... the hostile provocation against us is carried out, we won't help but responding with shocking punishment that the United States can't afford," he added.
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