‘US hopes to see major disarmament of nuclear-armed North Korea by 2020’

SEOUL: The US hopes to see "major disarmament" of nucleararmed North Korea by the end of President Donald Trump's first term in 2020, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday in Seoul. Speaking the day after an unprecedented summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Pompeo told negotiations on Pyongyang's atomic arsenal could move forward quickly and would take place "most certainly in the president's first term." "Major disarmament... We're hopeful that we can achieve that in the two-and-half years," he said, adding that there is "a lot of work left to do". At the first-ever meeting between sitting leaders of the US and North Korea on Tuesday in Singapore, Trump and Kim pledged in a joint statement to work toward the "complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula." -AFP