REUTERS
The United States has offered to meet North Korea without preconditions and made clear that Washington has no hostile intent toward Pyongyang, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said October 21, 2021, as the Security Council met over North Korea’s latest missile launch.
North Korea, which is formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), has long accused the U.S. of having a hostile policy toward the Asian state and asserted that it has the right to develop weapons for self-defense.
“The DPRK must abide by the Security Council resolutions, and it is time to engage in sustained and substantive dialogue toward the goal of complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” Thomas-Greenfield told reporters.
North Korea has been subjected to U.N. sanctions since 2006, which have been steadily strengthened to cut off funding for Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The measures include a ban on ballistic missile launches.
“We have offered to meet the DPRK officials, without any preconditions, and we have made clear that we hold no hostile intent toward the DPRK,” Thomas-Greenfield said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and then-U.S. President Donald Trump met three times in 2018 and 2019 but failed to make progress on U.S. calls for Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons and North Korea’s demands for an end to sanctions.
Thomas-Greenfield said that U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration was “prepared to engage in serious and sustained diplomacy.”
European members — Estonia, France and Ireland — also urged North Korea to “engage meaningfully” with repeated offers of dialogue by the U.S. and South Korea.
North Korea on October 19, 2021, test-fired a new, smaller ballistic missile from a submarine, prompting the United Kingdom and U.S. to raise the issue in the 15-member U.N. Security Council. (Pictured: Four photos provided by the North Korean government appear to show a ballistic missile being launched from a submarine on October 19, 2021.)
“It is the latest in a series of reckless provocations,” Thomas-Greenfield told reporters. “These are unlawful activities. They are in violation of multiple Security Council resolutions. And they are unacceptable.”
IMAGE CREDITS: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS