By IANS,
Pyongyang: North Korea Tuesday slammed the US for laying out “absurd preconditions” for the resumption of six-party talks.
According to North Korea’s foreign ministry, the US is unreasonably demanding Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons programme first while Washington itself has failed to fulfill its obligations, Xinhua reported.
An unnamed foreign ministry’s spokesperson, accused Glyn Davies, the US special representative for policy on North Korea, of making the unreasonable demands.
“What the special representative said and did prove that the US has had no interest in the resumption of the six-party talks from the beginning, while persisting in absurd preconditions,” the North Korean official said.
The six-party talks are aimed at removing the root cause of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula and denuclearising the whole peninsula. “We want a negotiated settlement of the issue but will never accede to unreasonable pre-conditions raised by the United States,” he said.
Pyongyang remains unchanged in its goal for the denuclearisation of the whole peninsula, but it will only be compelled to steadily bolster deterrence as long as Washington continues its hostile moves and increases nuclear threats toward North Korea, the spokesman added.
After a meeting with his South Korean counterpart, Cho Tae-yong, in Seoul Friday, Davies said the US had no interest in returning to the six-party talks without concrete signs that North Korea will abandon its nuclear weapons.
North Korea, China and Russia, the other parties to the six-party talks, have been calling for prompt resumption of the talks without any strings attached.