N. Korea envoy at UN says denuclearization ‘already off the table’ in talks with US
7 Dec, 2019 16:19 / Updated 6 minutes ago
North Korea’s ambassador to
the UN has rejected Washington’s call for “sustained and substantial dialogue,”
saying that the denuclearization sought by the Trump administration is already
“gone out the negotiating table.”
"We do not need to have
lengthy talks with the US now and denuclearization is already gone out of the
[sic] negotiating table," ambassador Kim Song said in a statement
on Saturday.
Song added that the Trump
administration’s calls for dialog are a “time-saving trick” to
push the denuclearization issue past next year’s election.
As Song released Pyongyang’s
latest statement, US President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon
Jae-in held a telephone discussion, brainstorming ways to restart diplomacy
with North Korea.
Pyongyang has given the
United States a year-end deadline to abandon its demand for unilateral
denuclearization, lest leader Kim Jong-un choose a “new approach.”
It is entirely up to the US
what Christmas gift it will select,” Vice Minister of
Foreign Affairs Ri Thae Song said in a statement on
Tuesday. Assuming the US does not drop the denuclearization demand, the North
Koreans will likely return to issuing sporadic threats against the US. State
media hinted at this on Wednesday, warning Washington that all-out war could
break out between the two nations “at any moment.”
Trump, for his part, has not
shied away from threats either. Though the president has not threatened Kim
with the “fire and fury” that he did in 2017, he has cautioned
his North Korean counterpart that “if we have to, we’ll use” the
might of the US military against him.
Trump and Kim have met three
times since last June. While the summits were historic, and gave both leaders
an opportunity to boast about moving to bring peace to the Korean peninsula, no
concrete progress towards denuclearization has been made, and Pyongyang has
restarted missile testing in recent months.
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