Iran Press/Asia: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un stressed that another meeting between the two leaders is only possible if Washington comes with the right attitude.
The North's official KCNA news agency on Saturday quoted Kim as making the remarks, two days after US president Donald Trump floated the idea of holding a potential third nuclear summit with the North’s leader.
“What is needed is for the US to stop its current way of calculation, and come to us with a new calculation,” Kim was quoted as saying in a speech to the Supreme People’s Assembly on Friday.
He also said that he would wait “until the end of this year” for Washington to decide.
Back in late February, Trump and Kim reached an impasse at their second face-to-face denuclearization talks in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi, with Washington demanding full disarmament and Pyongyang demanding economic incentives through partial lifting of harsh sanctions.
The summit in Vietnam's capital was cut short after Trump and Kim failed to reach a deal on the extent of economic sanctions relief for North Korea in exchange for its steps to give up its nuclear program.
The second summit, in fact, did collapse when the American president abruptly walked away from the talks without reaching a deal or even issuing a final statement.
In June last year, the two leaders met at a historic summit for the first time in Singapore, where they agreed to work toward de-nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Subsequent diplomacy between the two sides, however, made little progress, mainly because Washington refused to lift its extensive sanctions.
“The second DPRK-US summit in Hanoi in February raised strong questions about whether the steps we took under our strategic decision were right, and gave us a sense of caution about whether the US is even really trying to improve the DPRK-US relationship,” Kim added, using the initials of North Korea’s full name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The North’s leader also said that Washington came with “completely unrealizable plans” to Hanoi and that the US was “not really ready to sit with us face-to-face and solve the problem.”
“By that sort of thinking, the US will not be able to move us one iota even if they sat with us a hundred, thousand times, and will not be able to get what it wants at all,” Kim stressed.
The North Korean leader further blamed the US for continuing “to ignore the basic way of the new DPRK-US relations, including withdrawing hostile policies.”
Kim also warned that the White House mistakenly believes that “if they pressure us to the maximum, they can subdue us”, stressing that he had no interest in a third summit if it is a repeat of Hanoi. 101/211/201
Read More:
Trump asked Kim to hand over nuclear weapons just with a piece of paper
US doubts North Korea will give up nuclear program
