North Korea should be serious on denuking: Obama

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong, had defended his country’s right to maintain a nuclear deterrent and warned that Pyongyang won’t be cowed by international sanctions. “Stop the nuclear war exercises in the Korean Peninsula, then we should also cease our nuclear tests,” he said in his first interview yesterday with a Western news organization. 

Obama dismissed North Korea’s latest overture at a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Hannover, Germany. “We don’t take seriously a promise to simply halt until the next time they decide to do a test these kinds of activities,” Obama said. 

“What we’ve said consistently is that if North Korea shows seriousness in denuclearising the Korean Peninsula, then we’ll be prepared to enter into some serious conversations with them about reducing tensions and our approach to protecting our allies in the region. But that’s not something that happens based on a press release in the wake of a series of provocative behaviours. They’re going to have to do better than that.”