By Brian Han

North Korea expressed a desire to pursue a peace treaty with the U.S. It also wants to be able to freely pursue its nuclear weapons development program simultaneously.

For the U.S., the two primary terms of the proposal are mutually exclusive. In other words, North Korea can’t have its cake and eat it too.

But the communist country gave it a shot, which was immediately rejected on Tuesday by Special Envoy for North Korea Policy Sung Kim who spoke on behalf of the U.S.

“With regard to the North Korean statement suggesting we enter into peace treaty discussions, we have no interest in entering into any such discussions,” he said at Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing according to Yonhap.

“For us, the priority focus has to be the nuclear issue. As they often do, I’m afraid the North Koreans have their priorities wrong by suggesting that we sort of jump some steps, some very important steps, and start peace treaty negotiations.”

Part of the issue is that denuclearization is the top priority for this administration in regards to anything related to North Korea. Unfortunately, it seems almost impossible to get them to even consider a dialogue on the topic.

“And frankly at the moment, we can’t even get the North Koreans, as you mentioned the Foreign Ministry statement, we can’t even get the North Koreans to focus on denuclearization as a goal. So that’s why have not resumed any negotiations,” he said.