Denuclearization meeting : North Korea lashes out at US, calls talks 'extremely regrettable'

North Korea has called high-level talks with a US delegation led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo "extremely regrettable", contradicting Washington's account of how the meeting in Pyongyang went.


The discussions in the North Korean capital took place on the back of last month's summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore.

But while Pompeo on Saturday painted a positive picture of the follow-up talks, North Korean officials accused the US of trying to unilaterally pressure their country into abandoning its nuclear programme.

"We had expected that the US side would offer constructive measures that would help build trust based on the spirit of the leaders' summit. We were also thinking about providing reciprocal measures," an unnamed spokesperson of North Korea's foreign ministry said in a statement published by the official Korean Central News Agency.

"However, the attitude and stance the United States showed in the first high-level meeting [between the countries] was no doubt regrettable," the spokesperson added.

The statement came shortly after Pompeo said he had made progress "on almost all of the central issues" in the talks, including on setting a timeline for its denuclearisation, though more work remained to be done.
  [aljazeera.com]
 7/7/18
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