North Korea apparently said that the talks with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo aren’t going smoothly, adding that the two days of meetings ended “regrettable.”
According to The Associated Press, an anonymous spokesman for the North Korean Foreign Ministry accused the U.S. of unilaterally pressuring North Korea to denuclearize and “betraying the spirit” of the summit between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un last month.
He stated that the talks with Pompeo were “very concerning,” and suggested that the country is no longer as willing to give up its nukes as it had previously been.
Meanwhile, Pompeo shared a different view of the two days of talks, saying that the conversations were “productive,” “in good faith,” and that “a great deal of progress” had been made, the AP reported.
He told reporters “we made progress on almost all the central issues,” noted State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert on Twitter.
“Just before leaving Pyongyang, @SecPompeo gives US reporters a brief readout from his meetings. ‘These are complicated issues but we made progress on almost all the central issues. Some places, a great deal of progress, other places, there’s still more work to be done,” Heather Nauert tweeted.
The discussions are happening several weeks after Trump and Kim signed an agreement committing the U.S. to unspecified security guarantees in exchange for a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.
However, Trump has been criticized that the deal was too advantageous to North Korea and did not secure enough for the U.S.
The agreement is considered to be lacking specifics and the secretary’s trip to Pyongyang this weekend was intended to discuss details of the deal. Pompeo met with multiple senior North Korean officials, including Kim’s right-hand man, Kim Yong Chol, but did not meet with Kim during this trip.
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