North Korea yesterday said it has “no desire” to continue nuclear talks unless the US takes steps to end hostilities, a day after negotiations in Sweden broke down.
The discussions in Sweden followed months of stalemate following a February meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong -un and US President Donald Trump, and came after Pyongyang’s test of a sea-launched ballistic missile on Wednesday.
The North on Saturday walked away from the Sweden talks saying it was disappointed at the lack of “new and creative” solutions offered by Washington.
Photo: AP / Kyodo News
Pyongyang has “no desire to hold such nauseating negotiations such as this one unless the US takes practical measures to end hostile policies,” a spokesman for the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
“The fate of the US-North Korea dialogue is in Washington’s hands and the deadline is until the end of this year,” he said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency .
In Stockholm on Saturday night, the North’s leading negotiator, Kim Myong-gil, blamed the US for not giving up their “old attitude,” which led to talks ending “without any outcome.”
“I am very displeased about it,” he told reporters out the North Korean embassy.
However, Washington called the talks “good discussions,” saying the comments by North Korea did not reflect the content or the spirit of their eight-and-a-half-hour discussion.
The US has accepted Sweden’s invitation to resume talks in two weeks’ time, US Department of State spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said.
Kim Myong-gil’s comments did “not reflect the content or the spirit” of the “good discussions” that took place over eight-and-a-half hours, she said.
The US delegation “previewed a number of new initiatives that would allow us to make progress in each of the four pillars” of a joint statement issued after Trump and Kim Jong-un’s first summit in Singapore, Ortagus said in a statement.
Kim Myong-gil said the North proposed a suspension of talks until December.
The talks were held at the Villa Elfvik Strand facility in Lidingo, an island in the Stockholm archipelago located northeast of the capital, Swedish news agency TT said.
A magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck off Yilan at 11:05pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter was located at sea, about 32.3km east of Yilan County Hall, at a depth of 72.8km, CWA data showed There were no immediate reports of damage. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Yilan County area on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. It measured 4 in other parts of eastern, northern and central Taiwan as well as Tainan, and 3 in Kaohsiung and Pingtung County, and 2 in Lienchiang and Penghu counties and 1
A car bomb killed a senior Russian general in southern Moscow yesterday morning, the latest high-profile army figure to be blown up in a blast that came just hours after Russian and Ukrainian delegates held separate talks in Miami on a plan to end the war. Kyiv has not commented on the incident, but Russian investigators said they were probing whether the blast was “linked” to “Ukrainian special forces.” The attack was similar to other assassinations of generals and pro-war figures that have either been claimed, or are widely believed to have been orchestrated, by Ukraine. Russian Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, 56, head
‘POLITICAL GAME’: DPP lawmakers said the motion would not meet the legislative threshold needed, and accused the KMT and the TPP of trivializing the Constitution The Legislative Yuan yesterday approved a motion to initiate impeachment proceedings against President William Lai (賴清德), saying he had undermined Taiwan’s constitutional order and democracy. The motion was approved 61-50 by lawmakers from the main opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the smaller Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who together hold a legislative majority. Under the motion, a roll call vote for impeachment would be held on May 19 next year, after various hearings are held and Lai is given the chance to defend himself. The move came after Lai on Monday last week did not promulgate an amendment passed by the legislature that
FOREIGN INTERFERENCE: Beijing would likely intensify public opinion warfare in next year’s local elections to prevent Lai from getting re-elected, the ‘Yomiuri Shimbun’ said Internal documents from a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company indicated that China has been using the technology to intervene in foreign elections, including propaganda targeting Taiwan’s local elections next year and presidential elections in 2028, a Japanese newspaper reported yesterday. The Institute of National Security of Vanderbilt University obtained nearly 400 pages of documents from GoLaxy, a company with ties to the Chinese government, and found evidence that it had apparently deployed sophisticated, AI-driven propaganda campaigns in Hong Kong and Taiwan to shape public opinion, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported. GoLaxy provides insights, situation analysis and public opinion-shaping technology by conducting network surveillance
RSS