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Leaders of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the United States had "constructive and candid" talks in Hanoi Thursday and will "continue productive dialogues" to address issues of mutual concern, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Friday. "They had a constructive and candid exchange of their opinions over the practical issues arising in opening up a new era of the improvement of the DPRK-U.S. relations on the basis of the progress," the KCNA report said. The Hanoi summit "offered an important occasion for deepening mutual respect and trust and putting the relations between the two countries on a new stage," it added. Despite "antagonism and confrontation" deriving from seven-decade-long hostile relations and "inevitable hardships and difficulties" ahead, both sides could "create a significant advance in the DPRK-U.S. relations as desired by the peoples of the two countries if they firmly join hands to overcome hardships and difficulties with wisdom and patience," it said. "They agreed to keep in touch with each other for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and the epochal development of the DPRK-U.S. relations in the future, too, and continue productive dialogues for settling the issues discussed at the Hanoi Summit," the report said. DPRK top leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly cut short their two-day summit Thursday without signing an agreement as planned previously. Trump said Thursday afternoon in Hanoi at a press briefing that the main impediment to a deal was Kim's requirement that the United States lift sanctions against Pyongyang "in their entirety" in exchange for denuclearizing a "large portion" of the DPRK's nuclear program, which was not acceptable by the United States. However, DPRK Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho told a news conference early Friday morning that his country only asked for a partial lifting of sanctions at the meeting with Trump, contradicting what Trump said earlier. |
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