North Korea warns US

BEIJING: A North Korean official urged the United States on Thursday to immediately lift sanctions against his country, warning that the country’s "confidence-destroying measures" would undermine denuclearisation talks.

The US has insisted on maintaining stringent international sanctions on North Korea until it gives up its nuclear weapons, even as the two countries’ leaders are expected to hold a second summit soon.

"We think that sanctions and pressure do more harm than good," Song Il Hyok, deputy director general of the North Korean foreign ministry’s Institute for Disarmament and Peace, said at a defence forum in Beijing.

The sanctions, Song said, "are not at all" confidence-building measures "but confidence-destroying measures". At their first summit in Singapore in June, US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a vaguely-worded pledge on denuclearisation, but little progress has been made since then as both sides spar over how to interpret the text.