UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik) – Jeffrey Feltman, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, said on Wednesday following his visit to North Korea that the United Nations expects Pyongyang to “signal” willingness to prepare the negotiations on the settlement of the nuclear crisis, even though North Korean leadership did not offer any commitments on the issue.
“We emphasized to the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) officials that we really believe that they need to signal that they are willing now to go in different direction, to start some kind of engagement, to start talking about talks. They listened seriously to our arguments, they explored them with us. But they did not offer any type of commitment to us at that point. They have to reflect on what we said with their leadership,” Feltman told reporters.
According to Feltman, North Korea has agreed with the United Nations that it is important to prevent war from happening on the Korean peninsula amid the escalation of nuclear crisis.
"North Korean interlocutors agreed that it was important to prevent war. How we do that — was the topic of 15+ hours of discussions," Feltman told reporters.
Tensions on the Korean Peninsula escalated drastically this year as North Korea continued to make significant progress in its nuclear arms program. Pyongyang tested its most advanced international ballistic missile in November, which it said is capable of hitting any part of the mainland of the United States.
