WORLD BRIEFING
North Korea issued a veiled threat to increase its nuclear arsenal if U.S. officials do not quickly agree to the one-on-one talks that the communist regime is demanding.
The regime’s impatience came days after its No. 2 nuclear negotiator Ri Gun came away from meetings with Washington envoy Sung Kim without an agreement to hold bilateral talks.
“If the U.S. is not ready to sit at a negotiating table with the [North], it will go its own way,” the North’s Foreign Ministry said Monday in a statement carried by Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency.
The statement did not elaborate, but it was widely seen as a warning that the North will bolster its nuclear stockpile -- a tactic that the communist nation has often employed.
In Washington, the State Department did not comment on the North’s statement.
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