North Korea has on Thursday called for United States secretary of state Mike Pompeo to be dropped from the nuclear talks as Pyongyang no longer wanted to deal with Pompeo and said the official should be replaced by someone more mature.
According to Reuters news reports, Kwon Jong Gun, North Korean senior foreign ministry official warned that if the US does not abandon the “root cause”, then no one could predict the condition of the Korean Peninsula, as the US compelled Pyongyang to develop nuclear missiles and weapons.
The statement has come shortly after reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has overseen the test-fire of new tactical guided weapon, which the state-run KCNA news agency said had a “peculiar mode of guiding flight” and “a powerful warhead”.
The newly-guided tactical test was the first Pyongyang’s test since the Hanoi summit failure between Kim and his US counterpart Donald Trump in Vietnam in February, which has ended abruptly without reaching any nuclear agreement as Kim stressed over US sanctions relief and Trump stood on his stance of Kim’s last year commitment of full denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Kwon was quoted by KCNA as saying that the Hanoi summit reflected that nuclear talks could go wrong “whenever Pompeo pokes his nose in”.
Kwon said, “I am afraid that, if Pompeo engages in the talks again, the table will be lousy once again and the talks will become entangled.”
“Therefore, even in the case of a possible resumption of the dialogue with the United States, I wish our dialogue counterpart would be not Pompeo but another person who is more careful and mature in communicating with us.”
Kwon said that Pompeo had made “reckless remarks hurting the dignity of our supreme leadership”.