A North Korean official urged the US on Thursday to immediately lift sanctions against Pyongyang, warning that the “confidence-destroying measures” would undermine denuclearization talks. The two countries’ leaders are expected to hold a second summit soon, but the US has insisted on maintaining stringent international sanctions on North Korea until it gives up its nuclear weapons. “We think that sanctions and pressure do more harm than good,” Song Il-hyok, deputy director general of the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s Institute for Disarmament and Peace, said at a defense forum in Beijing. The sanctions, Song said, “are not at all” confidence-building measures “but confidence-destroying measures,” AFP reports.