Trump, Kim at odds over N-talks deadline

Bloomberg

The bonhomie between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is nearing a key deadline showing new signs of strain.
Trump urged Kim to “act quickly” to get a nuclear deal done, suggesting the two leaders could meet again “soon.”
His comments came hours after North Korea ruled out nuclear talks without a policy change by the US and reported on a military drill observed by Kim himself.
Veteran North Korea nuclear adviser, Kim Kye Gwan, told Trump that Pyongyang will no longer give him “things to boast about,” the state’s official KCNA news agency quoted him as saying. He added North Korea is no longer interested in talks that the US “uses to buy time.”
Trump and Kim Jong-un, who have previously displayed what Pyongyang calls “mysteriously wonderful chemistry,” appear to be going in different directions as the clock ticks down. Kim has given Trump until the end of the year to ease up on sanctions or risk him taking a “new path,” meaning a possible escalation of military tensions during the US presidential campaign.
North Korea’s foreign ministry turned up the heat further by criticising US efforts to highlight its human rights record in the United Nations. “Even if the DPRK-US dialogue is held in the future, the nuclear issue would never be put under discussion before the withdrawal of the US hostile policy would be put on the agenda for the sake of improved relations with the DPRK,” Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) quoted a ministry spokesman as saying.
The North Korean foreign ministry typically uses KCNA to issue its highest public pronouncements. It painted a bleak picture of the nuclear discussions, which have accomplished little since Trump and Kim Jong-un agreed to “work towards complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula” in their first meeting in June 2018.
After more than a year of talks and three Trump-Kim meetings, the two sides remain divided on issues from sanctions relief to disarmament.
North Korea hasn’t explained what Kim intends to do on his “new path,” although the regime has often referred to his decision to halt tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles.