N. KOREA: TACTICS MAY END PATH TO DENUCLEARIZATION

It could block path to denuclearization, North Korea warns.

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — North Korea warned on Sunday that if the United States continued to escalate its sanctions and human rights campaign against the North, that approach could permanently shatter any chance of denuclearizing the country.

Washington is holding fast to its policy of exerting “maximum” economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea, even though President Donald Trump has claimed progress in denuclearizing the North since his meeting with its leader, Kim Jong Un, in June in Singapore.

In the months after the Trump-Kim meeting, Washington has continued to crack down on companies, individuals and ships accused of engaging in such banned activities as money laundering, cyberattacks and shipto-ship transfer of fuel on North Korea’s behalf.

On Sunday, North Korea voiced its growing frustration, as Washington persisted in its efforts to squeeze the country with additional sanctions over its dismal rights record. Last Monday the Treasury Department blacklisted three top aides to Kim over serious rights abuses and censorship.

The North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday that if senior State Department and other U.S. officials believed they could force North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons by increasing sanctions and their “human rights racket to an unprecedented level,” it would be the “greatest miscalculation.”

Instead, the statement added, “it will block the path to denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula forever — a result desired by no one.” The statement, issued in the name of the policy research director of the North’s Institute for American Studies, was carried by the country’s official Korean Central News Agency.

The warning came amid a prolonged stalemate in negotiations between North Korea and the United States over the terms of denuclearization. In his meeting with Trump in June, Kim committed to “work toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” In return, Trump promised a peace regime on the peninsula, as well as security guarantees for “new” relations with North Korea.

Trump claimed the North Korean nuclear crisis had been “largely solved” with the summit. Since June, North Koreans have refrained from criticizing Trump.

But the North has become increasingly angry at U.S. negotiators, as working-level talks have bogged down over who should do what first in putting the broadly worded Singapore agreement into action. On Sunday, the North Korean institute accused officials from the State Department and other U.S. agencies of trying to sabotage the summit deal between Kim and Trump.

Washington is demanding a full declaration of the North’s nuclear assets for future inspections, but the North insists the United States first lift sanctions before it takes any steps toward denuclearizing. As working-level talks stalled, the North Koreans called off a meeting between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a senior North Korean official.