N. Korea dismisses South’s talks offer

SEOUL: North Korea dismissed offers of talks from the South during a rare exchange between the two rivals’ foreign ministers, Yonhap news agency said yesterday.

News of the brief encounter came as the South’s President Moon Jae-In urged a “peaceful resolution” to the tensions in a telephone conversation with his US counterpart Donald Trump.

Moon told Trump the South “cannot let another war to break out” on the peninsula.

The South’s foreign minister Kang Kyung-Wha shook hands with her Northern counterpart Ri Yong-Ho ahead of an Asean Regional Forum dinner in Manila on Sunday, Yonhap said.

Kang urged Ri to accept Seoul’s offers of military talks to lower tensions on the divided peninsula, and for discussions on a new round of reunions for divided families.

But Ri retorted: “Given the current situation in which the South collaborates with the US to heap pressure on the North, such proposals lacked sincerity,” an unnamed official was quoted as saying.

Kang reiterated again “the South’s sincerity” and repeated a call for Pyongyang to come forward for talks, the official said.

North Korea yesterday also condemned the latest sanctions passed by the UN.

“We will not put our self-defensive nuclear deterrent on the negotiating table,” Pyongyang said in a statement. – AFP