WASHINGTON, Sept 30 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The United States said it bears “no hostile intent” towards North Korea and remains open to the idea of negotiations, after Kim Jong Un called the offer “no more than a petty trick.”
Kim has accused the administration of US President Joe Biden of pursuing a hostile policy against his nuclear-armed nation, even though Biden’s government has repeatedly offered to meet North Korean officials without preconditions.
“The United States harbors no hostile intent toward the DPRK,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement.
“Our policy calls for a calibrated, practical approach that seeks serious and sustained diplomacy with the DPRK to make tangible progress that increases the security of the United States, our allies, and our deployed forces.”
“We are prepared to meet with the DPRK without preconditions. We hope the DPRK will respond positively to our outreach,” the spokesperson said, adding that Washington supports “inter-Korean cooperation” as aiding stability on
the peninsula.
Kim has expressed a willingness to restore North-South communication lines in early October.
In PYONGYANG, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un condemned the US offer of dialogue as a “facade”, state media reported Thursday, and accused the Joe Biden administration of continuing a hostile policy against his nuclear-armed country.
Talks between Pyongyang and Washington have been largely at a standstill since the collapse of the Hanoi summit between Kim and then-president Donald Trump over sanctions relief and what the North would be willing to give up in
return.
In recent months, the United States has repeatedly offered to meet North Korean representatives anywhere, at any time, without preconditions, while saying it will pursue denuclearisation.
But Kim condemned the declarations as “nothing more than a facade to mask their deception and hostile acts and an extension of hostile policy from past administrations”, the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported.
Under the new administration, “the US military threat and hostile policy against us have not changed at all but have become more cunning”, he said in a lengthy address to the Supreme People’s Assembly, the North’s one-party
parliament.
Kim’s speech comes after the North this week tested what it said was a hypersonic gliding missile, and earlier this month announced it had successfully fired a long-range cruise missile.
The tests are the latest advances in its weapons development programmes, which have seen it subject to multiple rounds of international sanctions. — NNN-AGENCIES
