President of South Korean calls for new denuclearization talks between the United States and North Korea

The second meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Kim Jong Un ended in disarray Thursday in the Vietnamese capital, without even a joint statement.

President of South Korean calls for new denuclearization talks between the United States and North Korea

Seoul:

South Korea's President Moon Jae-in on Monday urged the United States and North Korea to resume early talks on denuclearization after their Hanoi summit ended without an agreement last week.

Mr Moon, who has taken a casual approach to Pyongyang and facilitated the process of talks between the United States and North Korea, urged officials to find out exactly what had gone wrong at the time. of the high-stakes meeting, and predicted that an agreement would finally be reached.

"We hope that the two countries will continue their dialogue and that their leaders will meet again quickly to reach an agreement that has been postponed this time," said Mr Moon at a meeting on security in Seoul.

"While I think that the North American talks will come to an agreement, I ask officials to work hard for the resumption of talks between the United States and the North, because it is not desirable to have a long absence or deadlock in the talks. "

The second meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Kim Jong Un ended in disarray Thursday in the Vietnamese capital, without even a joint statement.

Trump told a news conference after the summit that the North Koreans had wanted sanctions against Pyongyang "lifted in their entirety".

According to a senior US official, Pyongyang, in exchange, offered to close "part of the Yongbyon complex," an extensive site covering several nuclear facilities, and the North would have other uranium enrichment plants.

North Korea rejected the allegations, saying it had only wanted some measures eased, and its proposal to close "all nuclear production facilities" in Yongbyon was its best and last offer.

"I ask that we find the exact gap between the two parties that led to a non-agreement at the Hanoi summit and explore ways to narrow that gap," Moon said.

About 100 kilometers north of Pyongyang, Yongbyon is home to the country's first nuclear reactor and is the only known source of plutonium for the Northern Armaments program.

It is not thought that Yongbyon is the only facility for enriching northern uranium and its closure would not in itself mean the end of the country's nuclear program.

However, Moon said that if all of Yongbyon's facilities were "fully closed, the denuclearization of the North must be seen to have entered an irreversible phase."