North Korea has expressed interest in holding direct talks with the US, a news report said, after the two sides traded barbs over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programs at a security forum.
“We are not against a dialogue. We are not against any negotiation for the issues of common concern,” Japan’s Kyodo news agency quoted North Korean ambassador to the UN Sin Son-ho as saying on Friday.
But the ambassador, speaking in New York, dismissed the possibility of a return to stalled nuclear negotiations involving the two Koreas, the US, Japan, China and Russia, saying “the six-party talks are gone forever.”
The US has offered to hold talks with the North within the six-nation process if it returns to the negotiating table and takes irreversible steps for denuclearization.
Last weekend, Assistant US Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said that the chances for direct talks between North Korea and the US were slim.
“Our bilateral negotiations are between the US and South Korea about our collective approach” to the North, Campbell told reporters in Seoul.
Sin said the five other parties to the nuclear talks “cheated” North Korea, accusing them of not implementing what they had agreed under a disarmament-for-aid deal. No more details were given in the Kyodo report.
The North Korean mission to the UN declined to comment.
North Korea quit the nuclear talks in April to protest a UN statement condemning a rocket launch. North Korea insisted it sent a satellite into orbit, while the US and its allies said it was actually a long-range missile test.
North Korea conducted its second nuclear test in May and a barrage of missile tests earlier this month, drawing international condemnation and prompting new UN sanctions.
Officials from the US and China are expected to discuss North Korea’s nuclear programs and other regional security issues at a strategic dialogue next week in Washington.
“North Korea will be a significant topic, but obviously one among many,” State Department Spokesman Philip Crowley said on Friday in Washington.
The US and North Korea engaged in a sharp war of words earlier this week over US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s recent comment likening the regime in Pyongyang to “small children” demanding attention.
At a regional security conference in Thailand, Clinton also said the North “has no friends left.”
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
At first, Francis Ari Sture thought a human was trying to shove him down the steep Norwegian mountainside. Then he saw the golden eagle land. “We are staring at each other for, maybe, a whole minute,” Sture said on Monday. “I’m trying to think what’s in its mind.” The bird then attacked Sture five more times on Thursday last week, scratching and clawing the 31-year-old bicycle courier’s face and arms over 10 to 15 minutes as he sprinted down the mountain. The same eagle is believed to be responsible for attacks on three other people across a vast mountainous area of southern Norway
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
RSS