Dispelling speculation that President Donald Trump could meet with Kim Jong Un ahead of the November presidential election, a senior North Korean diplomat said on Saturday that the country does not “feel any need” to enter into negotiations with the United States.
“We do not feel the need to sit face to face with the United States,” Deputy Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui said in a statement released by the state news agency KCNA.
“The United States is wrong if it believes that things like the negotiations would continue to work for us,” Choe added, before affirming that the United States considers dialogue with North Korea “to be nothing more than a tool to deal with its political crisis.”
The comments come ahead of a visit to South Korea next week by U.S. Secretary of State’s deputy envoy Stephen Biegun to discuss the stalled talks with the secret communist state.
Trump became the first president of the United States to meet with a North Korean leader in June 2018, and then took an unprecedented step on North Korean soil in 2019, aiming to denuclearize the Korean peninsula. .
The two men made headlines and history when they met in Singapore, after months of trading inflammatory spikes, with Trump promising “fire and fury” toward the “little rocket man.” Kim, meanwhile, said he would “tame the mentally deranged dotard of the United States with fire.”
But North Korea never stopped building nuclear warheads and missiles to deliver them, US intelligence officials and private analysts recently told NBC News.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Wednesday that the leaders of the United States and North Korea should meet again before the United States presidential election in November, which could help restart nuclear negotiations.
But this suggestion was dismissed as a “shallow trick” by Choe.
Tensions rose sharply between Pyongyang and Seoul earlier this month, when the North dramatically demolished an inter-Korean liaison office in a city on the border between the two.
North Korea also lashed out at North Korean defectors living in the South, for sending leaflets and propaganda balloons to the demilitarized zone.
In the same vein, he appeared to backtrack by announcing that he would suspend plans for an unspecified military action against the South, first proposed by Kim’s sister and her trusted aide, Kim Yo Jong, who has gained prominence in the last months.
Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton told reporters in New York on Thursday that the president could seek another summit with Kim as a “surprise October” ahead of the election, according to Reuters.
But this was rejected by North Korea.
“Now is a very delicate time when even the slightest mistake and misstep would incur fatal and irrevocable consequences,” Choe said, adding that the United States’ persistent “hostile policy” toward North Korea made dialogue and the meetings were unrealistic.
Reuters contributed
