UN official back from North Korea worried about ‘accidental move toward conflict’

by John Bowden - 12/14/17 8:35 PM ET

A United Nations official says in a new interview that he is worried about an “accidental move towards conflict” with North Korea after a recent visit to speak with officials from the country.

Jeffrey Feltman, the U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday that a “lack of communication” between the United States and North Korea is a major risk to peace.

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“The lack of trust in their mind meant that they had to rely on deterrence, meaning military deterrence, rather than on diplomatic dialogue in the short term,” Feltman told CNN.

“But I’m really concerned, Christiane, that you’ve got a lack of viable communications at the technical level. There’s no military-to-military talks across the 38th Parallel, there’s no trust right now,” he continued. “And there’s nuclear and military developments that defy the security council resolutions.”

He added that North Korean officials remain “quite focused on the statements from Washington.”

Feltman recently spent more than 15 hours speaking with North Korean officials, including the country’s foreign minister. In his CNN interview, he described the talks as productive and said the North Koreans gave U.N. officials a “fair hearing.”

“I have been in many diplomatic meetings where one side of the table or maybe both sides of the table simply read talking points and give long monologues to each other that repeat well-known positions or polemics and vitriol,” he said.

“That’s not what happened. They listened extremely carefully to the points that we were making over the four and a half days that we were in Pyongyang,” he said. “I don’t know if they’ll accept anything that we said. But they gave us a fair hearing about why the international community was so alarmed.”