North Korea holds America responsible for the collapse of nuclear negotiations in Sweden

North Korea has blamed the United States for failing to negotiate over its nuclear program, which resumed Saturday in Stockholm after months of deadlock, despite a further escalation of Pyongyang's missile tests.

The negotiations marked the first attempt to revive dialogue between the two countries since the failure of the Hanoi summit in February between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

North Korean envoy Kim Myung-gill and Stephen Pigeon, the US president's special envoy in Stockholm, met with Swedish special envoy Kent Harstead, who this summer freed Australian student Alec Sigley after being briefly detained by Pyongyang.

The working sessions were held in a fortified area on one of the Stockholm islands, hundreds of meters from the North Korean Embassy.

Kim Myung-gil said the nuclear talks in Sweden at the task force level between his country and the United States had collapsed.

"The negotiations did not meet our expectations and eventually collapsed," the North Korean negotiator told reporters through an interpreter outside his country's embassy in Stockholm.

The North Korean delegation arrived in Stockholm on Thursday for working-level talks on nuclear disarmament.

"We are heading for negotiations between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the United States at the task force level," Gill said after "a new signal has emerged from the US side, so we are going with high expectations and optimism about the results."

President Donald Trump said Thursday that the United States remained committed to resuming nuclear talks with North Korea despite Pyongyang's missile test. "They want to talk, and we'll talk to them soon," he told reporters at the White House.

North Korea said on Wednesday it had successfully tested a ballistic missile from a submarine. It was the most provocative test from North Korea since it resumed dialogue with the United States in 2018.

UN Security Council resolutions prohibit Pyongyang from using ballistic missile technology.

Pyongyang has consistently combined diplomatic approaches with military bullying as a means of pressuring the other side, and it may think these methods are paying off, experts said.

On Friday, UN diplomats said a UN Security Council meeting scheduled for the same day on North Korea's recent missile tests was postponed later this week.

Diplomats expected the council to be convened on Monday or Tuesday at the request of Britain, France and Germany.