Mike Pompeo, top N. Korean official plan summit
NEW YORK: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a top North Korean official are set to continue talks in New York to try to salvage next month’s nuclear summit, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov flew into Pyongyang for discussions with Kim Jong Un.
Kim Yong Chol, considered the North Korean leader’s righthand man, is the most senior official from Pyongyang to visit the United States in 18 years.
Pyongyang’s envoy joined Pompeo at the apartment of a US diplomat on Manhattan’s East side for talks over an evening meal that lasted about an hour and a half. Two more meetings are scheduled for today.
It was the third meeting between the two officials who are working to finalise planning for a June 12 summit designed to end a nuclear standoff that has threatened to plunge Korea back into war.
“They are meeting to see what needs to be done in the two weeks that remain. Between now and if we’re going to have a summit, they’re going to have to make clear what they’re willing to do,” a senior US official said.
US and North Korean envoys have also been meeting in Panmunjom in the Demilitarised Zone between North and South Korea, and an American team is in Singapore to make logistical arrangements for the meeting.
An AFP photographer saw Kim Chang Son, Kim Jong Un’s de facto chief of staff, in Singapore Tuesday for preparatory discussions there.
Washington wants North Korea to quickly give up all its nuclear weapons in a verifiable way in return for sanctions and economic relief.
But analysts say North Korea will be unwilling to cede its nuclear deterrent unless it is given security guarantees that the US will not try to topple the regime. Pompeo has scheduled a news conference on Thursday, at the end of his meetings with Kim.
The recently- appointed secretary of state called his South Korean and Singaporean counterparts over the weekend, and Japan is also keenly watching summit preparations.
Kim Yong Chol is the most senior North Korean on US soil since Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok met then- president Bill Clinton in 2000.
The general has played a key role during recent rounds of diplomacy aimed at ending the nuclear stalemate on the Korean peninsula.
He sat near to Trump’s daughter Ivanka during the closing ceremony for the Winter Olympics in South Korea.
He also accompanied Kim Jong Un on both of his recent trips to China to meet President Xi Jinping, and held talks with Pompeo in Pyongyang.
The key task ahead of the June 12 summit is to settle the agenda. The main stumbling block is likely to be the concept of ‘denuclearisation’ – both sides say they are in favor of it, but there is a yawning gap between their definitions. — AFP
They are meeting to see what needs to be done in the two weeks that remain. Between now and if we’re going to have a summit, they’re going to have to make clear what they’re willing to do. Senior US official