Preliminary working-level talks between North Korea and the United States, after many delays and false starts, were finally held in Stockholm this weekend, only to fall apart after eight hours.

On Saturday evening in front of his country’s embassy in Stockholm, North Korean nuclear envoy Kim Myong Gil read aloud a short statement saying that the talks had ended in failure and, predictably, placed all the blame on his U.S. counterparts.

The American side, the North Koreans emphasized, had not brought any new proposals, and what the Americans had suggested had been unacceptable.

North Korea, it continued,