The first negotiations in eight months between the Trump administration and North Korea aimed at breaking the logjam over dismantling the North’s nuclear program broke down only hours after they began in Stockholm on Saturday, the North Koreans said.

It was the latest indication that President Trump’s signature diplomatic initiative has stalled.

“The negotiation did not live up to our expectations and broke down,” the chief North Korean negotiator, Kim Myong-gil, said, according to Yonhap, the South Korean news agency. Mr. Kim added that the United States had arrived “empty-handed” and had “not discarded its old stance and attitude.”

The State Department, in a carefully worded statement, did not say the long-awaited session failed, and warned that the “early comments” from the North “do not reflect the content or the spirit of today’s 8 1/2 hour discussion.” The statement continued: “The U.S. brought creative ideas and had good discussions” with its North Korean counterparts, without specifying what they were.

Eager not to be cast as the obstacle to progress, the State Department also said its delegation previewed new proposals not only on denuclearization, but on other elements of the talks, which include a commitment to finding a formal end to the Korean War. State Department officials did not say how the North Korean negotiating team reacted.