North Korea Rules Out Quick Resumption of ‘Nauseating’ Talks with U.S.
In a statement issued a day after bilateral talks broke down in Stockholm on Saturday, the North Korean Foreign Ministry said that it would not meet with American negotiators again until after Washington took “practical measures for complete and irreversible withdrawal of hostile policy.”
The ministry suggested that the Trump administration, faced with a slew of domestic political scandals, was more interested in forcing a deal on North Korea and claiming a major diplomatic achievement to help the president’s re-election bid than in satisfying the North’s demands.
“The U.S. did nothing to prepare for these negotiations, but only pursued their political interest by using the North Korea-U.S. talks for their domestic politics,” said the ministry’s statement, which was carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
Shortly after the talks broke down, Morgan Ortagus, a State Department spokeswoman, said that the United States had accepted the invitation of the Swedish government for American and North Korean negotiators to return to Stockholm to meet again in two weeks.
On Sunday, North Korea called that idea “groundless.”
Negotiators from the United States and North Korea had met to resume denuclearization talks that had stalled since the collapse of the second summit meeting between Mr. Trump and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February. That meeting foundered on disagreements about how fast and how thoroughly the North should dismantle its nuclear program and how soon the United States would ease its sanctions.
Kim Myong-gil, the North’s chief negotiator, told reporters after meeting with his United States counterpart, Stephen E. Biegun, that the talks in Stockholm had collapsed because the American side came “empty-handed,” with no new proposals.
