North Korea rebuffs US talk offer, says it may be a 'trick'

North Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Myong-gil said Washington recently proposed holding a new working meeting in December but rebuffed it, saying that the message through a third party "amplifies doubts" and was possibly a "trick".

"I cannot understand why he (US Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Beigun) spreads the so-called idea of North Korea-US relations through the third party, not thinking of candidly making direct contact with me, his dialog partner," Kim said in a statement run by North Korean state news agency KCNA on Friday.

"His behaviour only amplifies doubts about the US," he said.

Kim added that if Washington has a solution to the stalled talks, then it can be presented directly to Pyongyang, but that he felt Washington did not have a "satisfactory answer" and the proposal for a meeting was "a trick to earn time", Efe news quoted KCNA as saying.

"Explicitly speaking once again, I am not interested in such a meeting," he said.

However, Kim said that if Washington was serious, Pyongyang was "ready to meet with the US at any place and any time", but if "the US still seeks a sinister aim of appeasing us in a bid to pass the time limit - the end of this year - with ease as it did during the North Korea-US working-level negotiations in Sweden early in October, we have no willingness to have such negotiations".

The Stockholm meeting in early October was held to try to break the stalled talks since the failed February summit in Hanoi, where Washington considered Pyonyang's offer regarding the dismantling of its nuclear assets insufficient and refused to lift the sanctions on the regime.

In Sweden, the meeting closed with Pyongyang accusing Washington of not offering anything new and insisted that the White House has until the end of year to modify its negotiating strategy.

Experts believe that if there were no breakthroughs, North Korea could choose to conduct new weapons tests, especially of intermediate-range missiles, as a strategy to pressure Washington and its allies in the region.