US: North Korea demands 'neither realistic nor acceptable'

The comments come after North Korea last week offered to restart talks with the United States and South Korea about its nuclear weapons program if the United Nations drops its sanctions.

Countryman is at the U.N. in Geneva heading the U.S. delegation talks on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty in 1970.

“It is important that the world respond calmly but deliberately without changing our emphasis that the goal of the world to which North Korea is committed is a denuclearized Korean peninsula,” Countryman said Monday. “And the more states that make that clear, the greater the chance we have of arriving at exactly that goal.”