Politics

North Korea says it will ‘never sit face to face’ with Washington

Seoul, Nov 30 (EFE).- Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, on Thursday ruled out the possibility of resuming talks with Washington and said that Pyongyang “will never sit face to face” with the United States.

Kim Yo-jong’s statement was published Thursday by the North Korean state news agency KCNA and follows a United Nations Security Council meeting earlier this week, convened to discuss the North’s launch of a military spy satellite.

During the UNSC meeting, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Washington “continues to call for dialogue on any topic with the DPRK, without preconditions. The DPRK can choose the time and the topic. But the DPRK needs to make that choice.”

DPRK is an acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

In Thursday’s statement, Kim said that “the sovereignty of an independent state can never be an agenda item for negotiations, and therefore, the DPRK will never sit face to face with the US for that purpose.”

“The main threat to international peace and security does not come from the exercise of the DPRK’s sovereign right but from the US high-handed and arbitrary practices to disturb and oppress it.”

Also Thursday, North Korea said that its first spy satellite, which it managed to put into orbit a little over a week ago, has taken images of US military installations in San Diego and Japan, as well as of the Suez Canal in Egypt.

Kim Jong-un reviewed these satellite photos in an operations report prepared by the Pyongyang General Control Center, KCNA reported.

North Korean media already reported in recent days that the satellite has taken photos of the White House, the Pentagon and other key US defense installations, but has not yet shown any photos obtained by the device which was launched into orbit on Nov. 21.

Experts believe that, regardless of the quality of the images captured by the North Korean satellite, the deployment of this device is an important leap that could now allow Pyongyang to detect, for example, movements of troops, assets and targets for potential preventive attacks. EFE

asb-emg/tw

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