North Korea and the United States will resume nuclear talks this weekend after negotiations were put on hold for months, a senior North Korean diplomat said Tuesday.
Choe Son-Hui, North Korea’s first vice minister of foreign affairs, said her country will have preliminary contact with the U.S. on Friday, and the two will hold working-level negotiations on Saturday.
“It is my expectation that the working-level negotiations would accelerate the positive development of the DPRK-U.S. relations,” Choe said in a statement released by Korean Central News Agency.
She did not disclose where the discussions would take place.
Negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear program stalled for months after President Trump’s February summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam. The U.S. declined to accept North Korean demands for broad sanctions relief in exchange for giving up some of its nuclear capabilities.
North Korea has since conducted short-range weapons tests, and Trump ousted his former national security adviser John Bolton, who held a hawkish view of how the U.S. should negotiate with the country.
At a forum hosted Monday in Washington, Bolton said Kim would “do whatever he can” to keep a nuclear weapons capability.
