North Korea says US proposals for talks on denuclearisation were a ‘trick’

Pyongyang not interested in 'sickening negotiations' with Washington

North Korea has tested missiles as recently as October (Getty)

North Korea has said that the United States had proposed resuming talks on denuclearisation in December, but warned that Pyongyang was not interested unless Washington was ready to meet its terms. And a top envoy said he believed the proposal was merely “a trick to earn time.”

The North Korean envoy to the talks, Kim Myong Gil, said Thursday that his counterpart in Washington, Stephen Biegun, had sent a proposal to the North through a third party. Mr Biegun and Mr Kim led their countries’ delegations to working-level talks in Sweden last month, which ended without an agreement.

In a statement that was carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, Mr Kim expressed strong doubt about Mr Biegun’s sincerity, asking why the US envoy had sent his proposal through an intermediary rather than contacting him directly.

“If the negotiated solution of issues is possible, we are ready to meet with the US at any place and any time​,” Mr Kim said. But he added that North Korea had “no willingness to have such negotiations” if the United States merely planned to stall, as ​he said Mr Biegun’s team had done in Stockholm​.

​After ​those talks collapsed, North Korea said it had no desire to engage in “sickening negotiations” with the United States anymore, swearing that it would never meet with US negotiators again until Washington had taken “a substantial step” towards a “complete and irreversible withdrawal” of its “hostile policy.”

Mr Kim indicated that​ the United States had offered incentives such as signing a document declaring an end to the 1950-53 Korean War, which was halted in a truce, and exchanging liaison offices in each other’s capitals.

But he said such incentives of “secondary importance” fell far short of meeting the North’s demand that the United States lift its “hostile policy,” which he said was “harmful to our rights to existence and development.”

In response to the latest North Korean statement, a State Department spokesperson said that Donald Trump remained “committed to making progress towards the Singapore commitments of transformed relations, building lasting peace and complete denuclearisation.”

The New York Times