US plans to urge pressure against North Korea at talks

The US will urge the international community to keep up sanctions pressure against North Korea at a security forum in Singapore this week, as concerns mount that Pyongyang has made little progress towards denuclearization.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his North Korean counterpart will attend the gathering in the city-state where US President Donald Trump and the North’s leader Kim Jong-un held a summit two months ago.

Pompeo and top diplomats from other countries involved in trying to curtail Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions will scrutinize whether the North has taken concrete steps towards abandoning its nuclear weapons.

At his landmark talks with Trump in June, Kim signed up to a vague commitment to “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” – a far cry from long-standing US demands for complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament.

A US official said Washington was “concerned” by North Korean violations of UN-approved sanctions, including illegal shipments of oil by sea.

Gatherings like Saturday’s ASEAN Regional Forum are “an opportunity to remind all countries of their obligations in adherence” of UN Security Council resolutions, the official said.

The annual forum, hosted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), brings together top diplomats from 26 countries and the European Union for talks on political and security issues in the Asia-Pacific.

Foreign ministers from nations involved in stalled six-party talks with North Korea will be at the gathering: the US, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea.