Kim Song, chair of the delegation of North Korea, addresses the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Picture: AP Kim Song, chair of the delegation of North Korea, addresses the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Picture: AP
North Korea blamed the
United States on Monday for a failure to restart stalled talks,
more than a year after President Donald Trump's first meeting
with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
North Korea said this month it was willing to restart talks
in late September but Washington needed to adopt a fresh
approach. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week
that meetings in September were not possible, though he added
that Washington is ready to meet and believes it is important.
In a speech at the U.N. General Assembly, Pyongyang's U.N.
ambassador Kim Song said it was time for Washington to share
proposals for talks.
"Assuming that the U.S. has had enough time to find out a
calculation method that can be shared with us, we expressed our
willingness to sit with the U.S. for comprehensive discussion of
the issues we have deliberated so far."
On the final day of the annual gathering of world leaders at
the United Nations, he called for the full implementation of a
statement issued by Trump and North Korean leader Kim after
their first meeting in Singapore in June last year. The pair
agreed in the statement to foster new relations and work towards
the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
"More than one year has passed," Kim Song said. "The
relations between the DPRK and the U.S. have made little
progress so far and the situation of the Korean peninsula has
not come out of the vicious cycle of increased tension."
"It depends on the U.S. whether the DPRK-U.S. negotiations
will become a window of opportunity or an occasion that will
hasten the crisis," he said, referring to North Korea's formal
name: the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton, a hawk
on North Korea who was fired three weeks ago, said in a speech
on Monday that North Korea has no intention of giving up its
nuclear weapons and benefits from stalling.
North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho did not travel to
the United Nations this year "due to his schedule," the North
Korean U.N. mission said. Ri has attended the high-level U.N.
meeting in New York for the past three years.
Trump made only a brief reference to North Korea during his
speech to the U.N. General Assembly last week, telling the
193-member world body that he had pursued "bold diplomacy" with
North Korea's leader.
"I have told Kim Jong Un what I truly believe: that, like
Iran, his country is full of tremendous untapped potential, but
that to realize that promise, North Korea must denuclearize,"
Trump said.
During his inaugural U.N. speech in 2017, Trump threatened
to wipe out North Korea, however, since June last year he has
met three times with its leader Kim in a bid to convince
Pyongyang to dismantle its nuclear and missile programs.
