During the closing ceremony for the recently concluded Olympics in South Korea, the office of South Korean President Moon Jae-in announced that a North Korean delegate to the Olympics said his country is willing to hold talks with the US.

US President Donald Trump responded by saying talks will happen only “under the right conditions.”

The Trump administration’s position is that North Korea must show a real commitment toward ending its nuclear and missile programs before any talks can take place.

The US has applied a series of sanctions in what it says is a “maximum pressure campaign” to force North Korea to disarm.

On Saturday, the spokesman for North Korea’s foreign ministry said the North would not accept preconditions for talks.

“In decades-long history of the DPRK-US talks, there had been no case at all where we sat with the US on any precondition, and this will be the case in future, too,” the spokesman said in comments carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

“The US attitude shown after we clarified our intention for DPRK-US dialogue compels us to only think that the US is not interested in resuming the DPRK-US dialogue.”

North Korea is formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“It is the consistent and principled position of the DPRK to resolve issues in a diplomatic and peaceful way through dialogue and negotiation,” the spokesman said.

“The dialogue we desire is the one designed to discuss and resolve the issues of mutual concern on an equal footing between states.”

AP