U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Saturday teams from DPRK and the United States have arrived in the Swedish capital to resume discussions on Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
CGTN’s Toby Muse reports.
DPRK’s chief negotiator says discussions with the U.S. on Pyongyang’s nuclear program have broken down, but Washington says the two sides had “good discussions” that it intends to build on in two weeks.
The DPRK negotiator, Kim Miyong Gil, said Saturday’s talks in Stockholm broke down “entirely because the U.S. has not discarded its old stance and attitude.”
Speaking outside the DPRK embassy, he read a statement in Korean that a translator next to him read in English.
Diplomatic ties between the U.S. and DPRK have been in statis since the February breakdown of a second summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un in Vietnam.
But State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said the DPRK’s comments “do not reflect the content or the spirit” of the “good discussions” that took place.
Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde confirmed on Twitter the presence of delegations. Sweden was the first Western country to open an embassy in Pyongyang in 1975 and is a major contributor of humanitarian aid to the DPRK. Because the U.S. does not have official diplomatic relations with DPRK, Sweden has often acted as a bridge between Washington and Pyongyang.
Story by The Associated Press
Boer Deng discusses the DPRK-US nuclear talks in Sweden
Boer Deng, the Washington Correspondent for The Time of London, spoke to CGTN about DPRK-US nuclear talks in Sweden.