SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea on Thursday said the United States has proposed a resumption of nuclear negotiations in December as they approach an end-of-year deadline set by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for the Trump administration to offer an acceptable deal to salvage the stalled talks.
In a statement released by state media, North Korean negotiator Kim Myong Gil didn't clearly say whether the North would accept the supposed U.S. offer.
He said North Korea has no interest in talks if they are aimed at buying time without discussing solutions. He said the North isn't willing to make a deal over "matters of secondary importance," such as possible U.S. offers to formally declare an end to the 1950-53 Korean War, which was halted by a cease-fire, not a peace treaty, or establish a liaison office between the countries.
"If the negotiated solution of issues is possible, we are ready to meet with the U.S. at any place and any time," said Kim Myong Gil, who called for Washington to present a fundamental solution for discarding its "hostile policy" toward North Korea.
"If the U.S. still seeks a sinister aim of appeasing us in a bid to pass the time limit -- the end of this year -- with ease as it did during the DPRK-U.S. working-level negotiations in Sweden early in October, we have no willingness to have such negotiations," he said, using the abbreviation of North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Negotiations have faltered since a February summit in Vietnam between Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump collapsed after the U.S. side rejected North Korean demands for broad sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities.
The working-level talks last month in Sweden broke down over what the North Koreans described as the Americans' "old stance and attitude."
Kim Myong Gil, who was North Korea's lead negotiator at the Stockholm talks, said Stephen Biegun, Trump's special envoy for North Korea, proposed via an unspecified third country to hold another round of talks in December.
"I cannot understand why he spreads the so-called idea of DPRK-U.S. relations through the third party, not thinking of candidly making direct contact with me, his dialogue partner, if he has any suggestions or any idea over the DPRK-U.S. dialogue," Kim Myong Gil said of Biegun.
The statement came a day after North Korea's State Affairs Commission, its supreme decision-making body, lashed out at planned U.S.-South Korean military drills and warned that Washington will face a "greater threat" if it ignores Kim Jong Un's deadline.
In an official statement Wednesday, the North said it felt "betrayed" by the U.S. decision to continue with joint air drills with South Korea, calling it an "undisguised breach" of an agreement made between Kim and Trump in Singapore last year.
As a result, North Korea said it no longer felt bound by previous commitments.
"The U.S. is not accepting with due consideration the year-end time limit that we set out of great patience and magnanimity," the statement from the country's State Affairs Commission said.
"We, without being given anything, gave things the U.S. president can brag about, but the U.S. side has not yet taken any corresponding step," it added. "Now, betrayal is only what we feel from the U.S. side."
Trump has repeatedly said that North Korea has stopped conducting nuclear or long-range missile tests under his watch, although it has conducted about a dozen shorter-range ballistic missile tests since April. But Pyongyang says Trump has reneged on a promise to end joint military exercises with Seoul.
"At present, when one party backpedals on its commitments and unilaterally takes hostile steps, there is neither reason nor any excuse for the other party to keep itself bound to its commitments. What's more, there is no sufficient time left," the North's statement said, vowing to answer dialogue with dialogue and "recourse to force in kind."
Information for this article was contributed by Kim Tong-Hyung of The Associated Press and by Simon Denyer and Min Joo Kim of The Washington Post.
A Section on 11/15/2019