North Korea said on Tuesday that there was “no justification” for maintaining full sanctions on Pyongyang given that it has halted nuclear and missile testing for the past 15 months, Reuters reported.

Ju Yong Chol, a North Korean diplomat responding to a speech by a senior U.S. arms control official at the U.N.-sponsored Conference on Disarmament, said that issues between the two countries should be addressed one-by-one so as to build trust.

Instead, at the Hanoi summit last month between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump, the United States “came up with the preposterous argument that sanction relief is impossible prior to denuclearisation”, Ju said.