A senior North Korean official ridiculed American hopes for talks on Tuesday, as the United States and South Korea agreed to consider scrapping a controversial working group established to coordinate their policy toward Pyongyang.

Kim Yo Jong, a senior official in the ruling party and sister of leader Kim Jong Un, released a statement in state media on Tuesday saying the United States appears to be interpreting signals from Pyongyang in a way that would lead to disappointment.

She was responding to U.S. National Security adviser Jake Sullivan, who on Sunday said he saw as an “interesting signal” in a recent speech by Kim Jong Un on preparing for both confrontation and diplomacy with the United States.

“It seems that the U.S. may interpret the situation in such a way as to seek a comfort for itself,” she said in a statement carried by KCNA. “The expectation, which they chose to harbour the wrong way, would plunge them into a greater disappointment.”

Kim’s statement came during a visit to Seoul by recently appointed U.S. special representative for North Korea Sung Kim, who was scheduled to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Unification Minister Lee In-young, who handles relations with the North, on Tuesday.

On Monday Sung Kim said he was willing to meet with the North Koreans “anywhere, anytime without preconditions” and that he looks forward to a “positive response soon”.

During talks between Kim and his South Korean counterpart Noh Kyu-duk, the two agreed to “look into terminating the working group” while reinforcing coordination at other levels, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The working group was set up in 2018 to help the two allies coordinate their approaches to issues such as denuclearisation talks, humanitarian aid, sanctions enforcement and inter-Korean relations amid a flurry of diplomatic engagement with North Korea at the time.

When asked last year about Seoul’s proposals such as reopening individual tourism to its northern neighbour, U.S. ambassador to South Korea at the time, Harry Harris, said that “in order to avoid a misunderstanding later that could trigger sanctions… it’s better to run this through the working group.”

Though Harris added that it was not the United States’ place to approve South Korean decisions, the remarks caused controversy in Seoul and a former aide to South Korean President Moon Jae-in later told parliament the working group was increasingly seen as an obstacle to inter-Korean relations.

The Moon administration would see ending the working group as a goodwill gesture from new U.S. President Joe Biden, said Ramon Pacheco Pardo, a Korea expert at King’s College London.

“From a South Korean perspective, this was basically a mechanism for the U.S. to block inter-Korean projects during the Trump years,” he said. “It would be a clever political move for the Biden administration to end the group, since consultation between Washington and Seoul will take place anyway.”

Military chief Aviv Kohavi warned American officials against their government’s plan to re-enter the 2015 nuclear deal this week during a visit to Washington, DC, as part of a last-ditch effort by Israel to affect the ongoing negotiations between the United States and Iran in Vienna.

The Israel Defense Forces chief of staff arrived in the United States on Sunday and spent the past two days in meetings with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in the Pentagon, the military said.

“The chief of staff presented the failures of the current nuclear deal, which allow Iran to make significant advances in the coming years in the quantity and quality of centrifuges and in the amount and quality of enriched uranium, and he stressed the lack of oversight in the area of developing a nuclear weapon,” the IDF said in a statement.

Kohavi’s visit to the US, which was delayed due to last month’s Gaza conflict, came as indirect talks between Washington and Tehran picked up steam, following the election last week of hardliner Ebrahim Raisi as Iran’s next president.

Both the current and former Israeli governments have voiced opposition to the US rejoining the 2015 nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which former US president Donald Trump abrogated in 2018, putting in place a crushing sanctions regime that prompted Iran to also abandon the agreement a year later.

Iran accused the United States on Tuesday of interference for saying its Presidential election on Friday was neither free or fair, Iranian state media reported.

A U.S. State Department spokesman said on Monday the United States viewed the process that made Ebrahim Raisi Iran’s president-elect as “pretty manufactured”, reiterating the U.S. view that the election was neither free nor fair.

“We consider this statement as interference in our domestic affairs, contrary to international law and reject it,” Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei was quoted by state media as saying.

“The U.S. government is not in a position to have the authority to express its views on the process of elections in Iran or any other country,” Rabiei said.

Raisi, a hardline judge who is under U.S. sanctions over human rights abuses, secured victory as expected on Saturday in Iran’s presidential election after a contest marked by voter apathy over economic hardships and political restrictions.

More than half of eligible voters were too dissatisfied to vote or appeared to have heeded calls by dissidents at home and abroad to boycott the election. A deterrent for many pro-reform voters was a lack of choice, after a hardline election body barred prominent moderates and conservatives from running.

Turnout in the four-man race was a record low of around 48.8% and there were 3.7 million invalid ballots thought to be mostly blank or protest votes.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that US President Joe Biden has no intention to meet with newly elected Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

Psaki told reporters during a briefing at the White House, “We don’t have any plans to meet at the leader level so it’s unclear that anything has changed on that front”.

Raisi, a hardline judiciary chief seen as a protégé of Iran’s supreme leader, was elected on Friday after winning nearly 62 percent of the votes cast. In his first press conference on Monday, Raisi said he would not meet Biden, answering the question of whether he would with a simple: “No.”

“The President’s view and our view is that the decision-maker here is the supreme leader,” Psaki said. “That was the case before the election, is the case today, probably will be the case moving forward.”

Raisi will become the first serving Iranian President sanctioned by the US government even before entering office, in part over his time as the head of Iran’s internationally criticized judiciary — one of the world’s top executioners.

“The President’s view and our view is that the decision-maker here is the supreme leader,” Psaki said. “That was the case before the election, is the case today, probably will be the case moving forward.”

Raisi will become the first serving Iranian president sanctioned by the US government even before entering office, in part over his time as the head of Iran’s internationally criticized judiciary — one of the world’s top executioners.

The new President will of course be held accountable for violations of human rights on his watch going forward,” said Psaki on Monday. She said that the US intends to continue negotiations on returning to the Iranian nuclear deal that have been ongoing for months in Vienna.

Psaki said progress is being made in the negotiations, but no final agreement has been reached.