Donald Trump refuses to lift sanctions against North Korea after no agreement reached in Hanoi summit

US President Donald Trump on Thursday said he cut short his nuclear summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un because the two sides could not agree on sanctions. “It wasn’t a good thing to be signing anything,” Trump said during a post-summit news conference. “We had some options, and at this time we decided not to do any of the options.” Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety and we couldn’t do that,” Trump said. 

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“The two leaders discussed various ways to advance denuclearization and economic driven concepts,” White House press secretary Sarah Sander said. “No agreement was reached at this time, but their respective teams look forward to meeting in the future.”

Sarah Sanders did not tell reporters why the schedule had changed and she declined to say whether there would be a signing ceremony.

As the two leaders sat down for Thursday’s formal discussions in Hanoi, Trump said success would come over a “longer period of time”. Multiple sanctions have been imposed on the North because of its weapons programmes and tensions soared in 2017 before a wave of detente.

Earlier, US President Donald Trump said he was in “no rush” to secure a deal over Pyongyang’s nuclear programme as he kicked off formal talks. The two men who once traded personal insults and threats of destruction are holding their second meeting in eight months, with analysts warning it needs to produce more concrete progress than their initial historic get-together in Singapore. The Singapore summit resulted in cozy images, but only a vague commitment from Kim to “work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”. Diplomacy has since stalled amid disagreements on what that actually means.

Earlier Kim said he would be willing to denuclearise, speaking on the second day of his summit with US President Donald Trump in Hanoi, Vietnam.

The two leaders held more one-on-one talks and roundtable discussions hoping to improve relations and reach a deal on denuclearisation.

“If I’m not willing to do that, I won’t be here right now,” Kim told reporters through an interpreter when asked if he was ready to give up his nuclear weapons.