Trump rivals to blame for deadlock — North Korea

North Korean state media blamed Donald Trump’s political opponents for the “deadlock” over denuclearisation yesterday, urging the US President to act boldly to make progress on the thorny issue.

Trump and the North’s leader Kim Jong-un held a groundbreaking summit in Singapore in June, which the US leader touted as a historic breakthrough.

At the meeting the pair struck a vague agreement to denuclearise the Korean peninsula, but there has been little movement since.

Meanwhile the North has criticised Washington for its “gangster-like” and “unilateral” demands for the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of Pyongyang’s atomic arsenal.

Yesterday Rodong Sinmun, the North’s most prominent daily, praised Trump for seeking to improve US-North Korea ties and achieve world peace, which it said would be the “feat of the century”.

“However, he faces too many opponents,” it said in a signed commentary.

Demands

The newspaper said Democrats and even some Republicans are hampering Trump’s efforts for their own partisan interests while media hostile to Trump are undermining his policies.

It accused bureaucrats and Trump’s aides of “speaking and moving in contradiction to the president’s will” and “distorting facts and covering up his eyes and ears in order to mislead him to a wrong decision”. North Korea has demanded that America agree to declare an end to the 1950-53 Korean War, accusing the US of failing to reciprocate a series of its “goodwill measures”. These include ending its nuclear and missile testing, the destruction of a nuclear testing site and handing over the remains of US troops killed in the Korean War.

When Kim met South Korean President Moon Jae-in in April for their first summit, they agreed to push for a declaration of an end to the Korean War this year.

But US officials insist denuclearisation of the North should be realised before such an event takes place.