North Korea says no nuclear talks unless US stops hostile policies

Seoul

NORTH Korea said on Sunday it has "no desire" to continue nuclear talks unless the United States takes steps to end hostilities, a day after negotiations in Sweden broke down.

The discussions in Sweden followed months of stalemate following a February meeting between the North's leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump, and came after Pyongyang's defiant test of a sea-launched ballistic missile on Wednesday.

The North walked away from the Sweden talks saying it was disappointed at the lack of "new and creative" solutions offered by Washington.

Pyongyang has "no desire to hold such nauseating negotiations such as this one unless the US takes practical measures to end hostile policies", a spokesman for the North's foreign ministry said.

"The fate of the US-North Korea dialogue is in Washington's hands and the deadline is until the end of this year," he said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

In Stockholm, the nuclear-armed North's leading negotiator, Kim Myong Gil, blamed the US for not giving up their "old attitude" which led to talks ending "without any outcome".

But Washington called the talks "good discussions", saying the comments by North Korea did not reflect the content or the spirit of their eight-and-a-half-hour discussion.

The United States accepted host Sweden's invitation to resume talks in two weeks' time, State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said.

Mr Trump and Mr Kim adopted a vaguely worded document on the "complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula" at their first summit in June last year, but little progress has since been made. AFP