BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images
US President Donald Trump and North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un talk before a meeting in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on June 30, 2019, in Panmunjom, Korea.
- The Trump administration is seeking to start new denuclearization negotiations with North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Un, White House national security adviser Robert O'Brien told Axios.
- "We've been letting them know, through various channels, that we would like to get those [negotiations] back on track and to implement Chairman Kim's commitment" to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, O'Brien said.
- The last round of talks between the US and North Korea collapsed in October, after North Korea demanded an end to US sanctions.
- Trump so-far has little to show for the bond he claims he has forged with Kim, with North Korea continuing its nuclear program despite his threats and attempts to negotiate.
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President Donald Trump wants to restart denuclearization talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that have so far resulted in no concrete measures being taken by the rogue state to halt its nuclear program or reduce its nuclear arsenal, Axios reported on Monday.
White House national security adviser Robert O'Brien in an interview published Monday told the outlet: "We've reached out to the North Koreans and let them know that we would like to continue the negotiations in Stockholm that were last undertaken in early October."
Negotiations have been all but dead since the US refused to comply with North Korean demands to cancel sanctions as a condition for talks to proceed during discussions in the Swedish capital.
"We've been letting them know, through various channels, that we would like to get those [negotiations] back on track and to implement Chairman Kim's commitment" to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, O'Brien said.
Trump has made much of the personal bond he has forged with Kim as he seeks to achieve what US presidents for decades have failed to, and persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons.
The president told supporters at a rally in 2018 that the two had "fallen in love," and in June 2019 he became the first US president to step foot in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea for a face-to-face meeting with Kim.
Korean People's Army (KPA) soldiers watch a military parade marking the 105th anniversary of the birth of late North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung, in Pyongyang on April 15, 2017.
But so far there has been little to show for the expressions of affection and headline dominating summits, with North Korea continuing to develop nuclear weapons and recent satellite imagery in December showing new activity at several sites key to North Korea's missile program.
O'Brien's predecessor as national security adviser, John Bolton, has even suggested that Trump's claims that he wants to halt North Korea's nuclear program are merely "rhetorical," and that the administration should admit its North Korea policy has been a failure.
Kim has so far not delivered a "Christmas present" he had ominously promised the US late last year, which some analysts feared could take the form of another nuclear weapon test.
In the one clear concession Trump has extracted, North Korea has frozen the major weapons tests that led to a tense stand-off between Trump and Kim shortly after Trump took office.
O'Brien reportedly hailed the absence of any new provocations from North Korea with cautious optimism.
Kim "promised to send a Christmas present," O'Brien said. "The president suggested he send him a vase. We didn't get a vase or any other sort of Christmas gift. That appears to be positive."