DPRK's chief negotiator, Kim Myong Gil, told reporters Saturday that his country had broken off recently restarted denuclearization discussions in Sweden.

"The negotiations did not live up to our expectations and were canceled. I am very disappointed," DPRK's chief negotiator Kim Myong Gil told the Republic of Korea (RoK)’s news agency Yonhap after the talks.

The first DPRK-US talks in more than seven months were held in Lidingo, a suburb of Sweden's capital Stockholm, and lasted eight and a half hours.

"It is now up to the US to resume the dialogue," Kim was quoted by the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter as saying.

"It's a big failure. If there is no breakthrough now, it will be very difficult to plan for a summit between Trump and Kim. And without a summit, there can also be no bilateral agreement" on denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, Jerker Hellstrom, a security policy analyst at the Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI), told Swedish Television.

Swedish Foreign Ministry has made no comment on Saturday's talks. Earlier, Foreign Minister Ann Linde twitted that dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang is "needed to reach denuclearization and peaceful solution."

Hours after Kim's remarks, the US State Department said officials from the two sides had "good discussions."

Its delegation, which was led by Stephen Biegun, US special representative for the DPRK affairs, "had good discussions with its DPRK counterparts" and has accepted an invitation from Sweden to "return to Stockholm to meet again with its DPRK counterparts in two weeks time, in order to continue discussions on all of the topics," said department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus in a statement.

The denuclearization talks between Pyongyang and Washington have hit a stalemate since the second summit between top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi in late February ended without any agreement. The two leaders first met in Singapore in June 2018.

In an impromptu meeting in late June at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom, Trump and Kim agreed to restart working-level talks.

                                                        Source: NDO

Related Topics

Vietnam strengthens business and investment ties in Laos

Africa strives to overcome challenges for development

Progress in cooperation between EU and Gulf Cooperation Council

AIPA's 45th General Assembly opens in Vientiane

---

Challenges from population aging

Many countries are grappling with rapidly aging population. As population aging becomes an irreversible global trend with significant impacts on economic and social sectors, nations face the urgent task of creating flexible policies to adapt to and make the most of this trend to build prosperous and sustainable societies.

World tourism industry promotes potential and cohesion

With a series of stimulus measures, the world tourism industry is on the way to recovery as before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. Facing the opportunity to take off, the "smokeless industry” is expected to strongly contribute to global economic growth while promoting potential and cohesion, contributing to peace and sustainable development.

Existential danger from COVID-19 pandemic

The danger from the COVID-19 pandemic is still latent, threatening people’s health and lives in the context that the immunity provided from the COVID-19 vaccine has decreased. Many other dangerous diseases are also likely to break out when the global vaccination rate slows down, due to inequality in access to health services, vaccine hesitancy, and consequences of economic recession.

Vietnam among ASEAN countries recording EV sales surge

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is witnessing a rise in the sales of electric vehicles (EVs) in Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia, according to Maybank Investment Bank Research (Maybank IB Research).

International friends bid farewell to Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong

The respect paying ceremony for Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong continued on the morning of July 26 at the National Funeral Hall in Hanoi, with high-level delegations from foreign countries and international organisations paying their last respects and expressing deep condolences.

Global outpouring of grief for Vietnamese Party chief

A wave of condolences have poured in from world leaders, international organisations, rulling parties, Communist parties and partner parties following the death of Vietnamese Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong.