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Shkruar nga Julian E. Zelizer,
North Korea said the United States must recognize that reality has changed since the high-level meetings the countries held earlier and no future dialogue can lead to an end to its nuclear program, the state news agency KCNA reported.
Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who is believed to be speaking on behalf of her brother, said she accepts that personal relations between Kim and US President Donald Trump are "not bad."
But if Washington intends to use personal reports as a way to end the North's nuclear weapons program, such an attempt would become "an object of ridicule," Kim Yo Jong said, according to the statement published by KCNA.
"If the US fails to accept the changed reality and continues to insist on the failed past, a meeting between North Korea and the US will remain only a 'hope' of the American side," she said.
According to her, North Korea's capabilities as a nuclear weapons state, as well as the geopolitical environment, have changed radically since Kim and Trump met three times during Trump's first presidential term.
"Any attempt to deny North Korea's position as a nuclear-weapon state... will be resolutely rejected," she said.
Asked about North Korea's statement, a White House official said Trump remains committed to the goals he set during his three previous meetings with Kim during his first presidential term.
"The president stands by those goals and remains open to engaging with Chairman Kim to achieve the complete denuclearization of North Korea," a White House official told Reuters.
At their first meeting in Singapore in 2018, Trump and Kim signed an agreement in principle to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. A follow-up summit in Hanoi, held a year later, collapsed over a disagreement over lifting international sanctions on Pyongyang.
President Trump has said he has an "excellent rapport" with Kim, and the White House said the president is open to the idea of communicating with the North Korean leader./ REL
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