Kim and Trump to continue ‘productive talks to discuss denuclearization’: KCNA

People read the Rodong Sinmun newspaper showing coverage of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un visiting Vietnam for a summit in Hanoi with US President Donald Trump, in a public square in Pyongyang on February 28, 2019. – The US-North Korea nuclear summit in Hanoi ended abruptly without a deal, with President Donald Trump saying he had decided to “walk” in the face of Kim Jong Un’s demands to drop sanctions. (Photo by Kim Won Jin / AFP)

 

SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump have agreed to continue “productive” discussions on denuclearization, Pyongyang’s state media said Friday, hours after a summit between the two leaders in Hanoi ended abruptly with no agreement.

The highly anticipated meeting in Vietnam was supposed to build on the leaders’ historic first summit in Singapore last year, but the latest talks ended in deadlock with Washington and Pyongyang giving starkly different accounts of the reasons behind the impasse.

On Friday however, the North’s official KCNA news agency said that Kim and Trump had “agreed to continue having productive talks to discuss the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and the improvement of US-North Korea relations”.

“Chairman Kim and President Trump have expressed their confidence that North Korea-US relations can achieve groundbreaking improvements if they collaborate together with patience and wisdom, although there are many unavoidable obstacles ahead”, KCNA said, making no mention of the breakdown of the high-stakes summit.

The report came hours after North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho held a highly unusual late-night press conference, denying Trump’s claims that Pyongyang was seeking a complete lifting of sanctions imposed on it.

Ri told reporters the North had offered to dismantle its Yongbyon nuclear plant in exchange for partial sanctions relief, while Trump had earlier said that Pyongyang had demanded the lifting of all sanctions imposed over the country’s banned nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programmes.


© Agence France-Presse

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