US to give N Korea timeline with ‘specific asks’ soon

EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE: The United States will soon present a timeline to North Korea with “specific asks” of Pyongyang after a historic summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a senior defence official said.

The official, who spoke to a small group of reporters ahead of a trip to Asia this week by defence secretary Jim Mattis, did not specify details but suggested that the timeline would be rapid enough to make clear Pyongyang’s level of commitment.

“We’ll know pretty soon if they’re going to operate in good faith or not,” the official said.

“There will be specific asks and there will be a specific timeline when we present the North Koreans with our concept of what implementation of the summit agreement looks like.”

Trump has drawn some criticism from national security analysts for an agreement that emerged from his June 12 summit with Kim that had few details on how Pyongyang would surrender its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

Secretary of state Mike Pompeo said last week he would likely travel back to North Korea “before too terribly long” to try to flesh out the summit commitments.

At the Singapore summit, Kim reaffirmed a commitment to work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, while Trump said he would halt joint US-South Korean “war games.”

Mattis, at the start of a weeklong trip that includes stops in China, South Korea and Japan, said Trump’s guidance on suspending military drills applied not just to the major Freedom Guardian exercise in August but also to two smaller Korean Marine Exchange Program training exercises.