North Korea won’t be bound by old commitments if US continues ‘most brutal and inhuman sanctions’ – senior diplomat

21 Jan, 2020 14:58

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FILE PHOTO A projectile is fired during North Korea's missile tests in this undated picture released by North Korea's Central News Agency on November 28, 2019. © KCNA via REUTERS 

A North Korean envoy in Geneva has warned that denuclearization is impossible if the US maintains its “hostile policies,” pushing Pyongyang to seek a “new path” from the stalled bilateral talks.

“We found no reason to be unilaterally bound any longer by the commitment that the other party fails to honor,” Ju Yong-chol, a counsellor at Pyongyang’s mission in Geneva, said at the UN-backed disarmament conference on Tuesday, as quoted by Reuters.
The diplomat blasted the US for making “unilateral demands” and continuing the “most brutal and inhuman sanctions.”

If the US persists in such hostile policy towards the DPRK there will never be the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

Pyongyang “may be compelled to seek a new path” if Washington continues its current policy, he said.

Ju made his comments after the expiration of the year-end deadline North Korea gave Washington to change its approach to negotiations. Officials in Pyongyang have been accusing the US of using the talks as a deception tactic.

The situation around the Korean Peninsula offered a glimpse of optimism in 2018, when US President Donald Trump held historic face-to-face talks with his North Korean counterpart Kim Jong-un in Singapore. The negotiations have since stalled and relations deteriorated further as parties failed to agree on the terms of denuclearization.

Pyongyang test-fired several missiles last year, which it claimed were done for purely defensive purposes.

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