Pompeo sets off for North nuclear talks
NSA John Bolton said Pompeo would discuss with the North Koreans ‘ how to dismantle all of their WMDs and ballistic missile programmes in a year.’
State separtment said the US will not provide a timeline to North Korea to ‘ denuclearise’
Washington, July 5: US secretary of state Mike Pompeo left Washington on Thursday bound for Pyongyang and his latest round of talks with Kim Jong- un on North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.
Washington’s top diplomat and senior aides took off shortly after 2: 00am and were due in the North Korean capital on Friday, where Pompeo is to stay overnight for the first time.
President Donald Trump met Kim at a historic summit in Singapore last month and the US leader has been bullish about hopes for peace, boasting that the threat of nuclear war is over.
But the statement the leaders signed was short on detailed commitments and Pompeo has been tasked with negotiating a plan to achieve the “complete denuclearisation” of the Korean peninsula.
This would involve Kim making a detailed declaration of the extent of his nuclear arsenal and enrichment program, and agreeing a timetable for it to be dismantled and placed under inspection.
Washington hopes that the process can be underway within a year, but many expert observers and Trump critics warn that Kim’s summit promise meant little and the process could take years.
In the meantime, Pompeo and Trump have vowed to keep in the place the international economic sanctions that they believe forced the North to the negotiating table in the first place.
After talks late Friday and early Saturday in
Pyongyang, Pompeo is due to fly on to Tokyo to brief his Japanese and South Korean counterparts.
His round- the- world diplomatic voyage will then take him on to Vietnam and then Abu Dhabi before he arrives in the Belgian capital Brussels to rejoin Trump for next week’s Nato summit.
This will be the third trip to Pyongyang for Pompeo, President Donald Trump’s point- man on the North. He met directly with Kim on both of his previous visits. So, with the handshakes and small talk now behind them, this could be where the rubber hits the road. Or where the Trump- Kim train starts to go off the rails.
Recent media reports citing intelligence assessments suggest North Korea is continuing to build and improve the infrastructure for its nuclear and missile programmes.
Declining to speak on intelligence matters, state department spokesperson Heather Nauert told reporters last week: “We’re in a good spot. We’re all keeping a close eye. The secretary has been very clear and very blunt with the North Koreans about what he expects.”
“I know some individuals have given timelines; we’re not going to provide a timeline,” Nauert said Tuesday.