U.S. halted new sanctions against North Korea on Monday, while President Trump has renewed the hopes that a summit between him and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un could still be held, informed Fox News, citing The Wall Street Journal.
The White House was eager to introduce additional sanctions on North Korea as early as Tuesday but decided to halt the process. Trump claimed on Sunday that a U.S. delegation was in North Korea to make preparation for a potential summit with Kim.
Trump has canceled the summit earlier this month following North Korea’s increasingly harsh rhetoric. The Treasury Department had prepared fresh new sanctions to impose on almost three dozen targets, including Chinese and Russian entities, The Wall Street Journal informed.
“The goal here is to achieve maximum pressure,” a senior administration official told the newspaper last week. “We’re still short of that.”
State Department and South Korea’s Foreign Ministry came out with announcement that U.S. and North Korean officials have been engaged in talks. Trump tweeted Sunday that an American team had “arrived in North Korea to make arrangements for the Summit between Kim Jong Un and myself.”
“I truly believe North Korea has brilliant potential and will be a great economic and financial Nation one day,” Trump stated. “Kim Jong Un agrees with me on this. It will happen!”
In March, the State Department announced new sanctions on North Korea after it found an illegal nerve agent was used to kill Kim’s estranged brother. In announcing the new sanctions, the State Department said it “strongly condemns the use of chemical weapons to conduct an assassination.”
The new sanctions topped an already mounting list levied against the hermit kingdom.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in had a surprise meeting over the weekend with Kim and said his North Korean counterpart had committed to sitting down with Trump and to “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
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