U.S. wants nuclear talks restart, N. Korea claims

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.

Nuclear 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.”