Trump wants solo, not multi-party talks with North Korea: US official

President Donald Trump's national security adviser on Sunday said that the U.S. has little interest in joining other countries in a multi-nation effort to get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. "I think Kim Jong Un, at least up until now, has wanted the one-on-one contact with the United States, which is what he has gotten," John Bolton said, adding that Trump is open to possibility of a third summit with Kim.

Following their talks in Russia on Thursday, President Vladimir Putin suggested the revival of a multilateral approach to the denuclearization negotiations, which have failed in the past.

Putin said Kim is willing to give up nuclear weapons, but only if he gets ironclad security guarantees supported by a multinational agreement.

Earlier, Trump on Friday welcomed Russian and Chinese help with North Korean nuclear negotiations, despite Kim Jong Un accusing the US of “bad faith” at a first summit with Vladimir Putin.

“I appreciate that Russia and China are helping us,” he told reporters at the White House.

Putin’s first summit with Kim on Thursday was seen as a response to the failure of a Kim-Trump meeting in Hanoi in February, where talks broke down without agreement.

But Trump indicated that he does not see China and Russia as rivals in the struggle to get North Korea to give up its nuclear arsenal.

“China is helping us because I think they want to. They don’t need nuclear weapons right next to their country,” Trump said.

“I think we’re doing very well with North Korea. A lot of progress is being made,” he added.

“I appreciated President Putin’s statement yesterday. He wants to see it done also. I think there is a lot of excitement for getting a deal done with North Korea.”

Kim left his summit with Putin indicating that he has cooled on the much-touted bid by Trump to woo his country into a non-nuclear future.

The official Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim told Putin the US had adopted a “unilateral attitude in bad faith” at the Hanoi summit.

“Peace and security on the Korean peninsula will entirely depend on the US future attitude, and the DPRK will gird itself for every possible situation,” Kim was quoted as saying.