SEOUL, July 1 (Xinhua) -- South Korean President Moon Jae-in has said that his country will make all-out efforts to let the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the United States hold talks before the U.S. presidential election.
Moon made the remarks during a video conference with European Council President Charles Michel and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, which was held on Tuesday to discuss ways to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak, the South Korean presidential Blue House said Wednesday.
A Blue House official, who declined to be identified, told a press briefing that Moon said during the video conference that he will make efforts to maintain a dialogue momentum among the two Koreas and the United States.
Moon was quoted as saying South Korea hoped to push for dialogue efforts between Pyongyang and Washington before the U.S. presidential election, calling for the European Union (EU) to play its role.
The South Korean leader said during the video conference that his country will make all-out efforts to let the DPRK and the United States sit face-to-face for dialogue before the U.S. presidential election.
When asked whether the DPRK-U.S. talks means a summit, the senior Blue House official said "yes."
Denuclearization talks between the DPRK and the United States have stalled since the second summit between top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump ended without any agreement in February 2019 in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi.
Tensions escalated on the Korean Peninsula after the DPRK demolished the inter-Korean joint liaison office building in the DPRK's border city of Kaesong last month in protest against anti-Pyongyang leaflets sent across the border by South Korean civic group activists, mostly defectors from the DPRK. The DPRK has also cut off all communication lines with South Korea.
The Blue House official told reporters that since the destruction of the Kaesong liaison office, the security offices of the Blue House and the White House have closely communicated.
The official noted that President Moon's thought about the DPRK-U.S. talks was already delivered to the U.S. side, which also empathized with the thought.
