North Korea on Saturday said the US was acting with “alarming” impatience on the issue of denuclearisation, after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stressed the need to maintain full sanctions pressure on Pyongyang.
The contrasting comments at a security forum in Singapore came after a new UN report showed Pyongyang was continuing with its nuclear and missile programmes and evading sanctions through ship-to-ship oil transfers.
At historic talks with President Donald Trump in June, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un signed up to a vague commitment to “denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula” — a far cry from long-standing US demands for complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament.
While US officials have publicly been optimistic about the agreement, Pyongyang appears to have made little substantial progress and concerns have been growing that some UN member states have been easing sanctions.
At the ASEAN Regional Forum, Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho insisted North Korea stood “firm in its determination and commitment” to implement the June agreement signed in Singapore.
But he criticised the US for undermining confidence in the process: “What is alarming, however, is the insistent moves manifested within the US to go back to the old, far from its leader’s intention.”
Since the June agreement, Pyongyang had taken “goodwill measures”, including a halt on nuclear and missile tests and “dismantling a nuclear test ground”, he said, according to a statement.
