Sanctions stay until denuclearisation: Pompeo
SEOUL/BEIJING: Tough sanctions will remain on North Korea until its complete denuclearisation, the United States secretary of state said yesterday, apparently contradicting the North’s view that the process agreed at this week’s summit would be phased and reciprocal.
US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un issued a joint statement after their meeting in Singapore this week that reaffirmed the North’s commitment to ‘‘work towards complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula‘‘, while Trump ‘‘committed to provide security guarantees’’.
Trump later told a news conference he would end joint USSouth Korean military exercises.
‘‘President Trump has been incredibly clear about the sequencing of denuclearisation and relief from the sanctions,’’ Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters after meeting South Korea’s president and Japan’s foreign minister in Seoul.
‘‘We are going to get complete denuclearisation; only then will there be relief from the sanc tions,’’ he said.
North Korean state media reported on Thursday that Kim and Trump had recognised the principle of ‘‘stepbystep and simultaneous action’’ to achieve peace and denuclearisation on the Korean peninsula.
The summit statement provided no details on when North Korea would give up its nuclear weapons programme or how the dismantling might be verified.
Sceptics of how much the meeting achieved pointed to the North Korean leadership’s longheld view that nuclear weapons are a bulwark against what it fears are US plans to overthrow it and unite the Korean peninsula.
However, South Korean Presi dent Moon Jaein said the world, through the summit, had escaped the threat of war, echoing Trump’s upbeat assessment of his meeting with Kim.
‘‘What’s most important was that the people of the world, including those in the United States, Japan and Koreans, have all been able to escape the threat of war, nuclear weapons and missiles,’’ Moon told Pompeo.
Pompeo insisted North Korea was committed to giving up its nuclear arsenal but said it would ‘‘be a process, not an easy one’’.
Also yesterday, North and South Korea held their first military talks in more than a decade. The talks followed on from an interKorean summit in April at which Moon and Kim agreed to defuse tension and cease ‘‘hostile acts’’.
Speaking later in the day in Beijing, Pompeo said China, Japan and South Korea all acknowledged a corner had been turned on the Korean peninsula issue, but that all three had also acknowledged sanctions remain in place until denuclearisation is complete. — Reuters