CIA’s Pompeo said to have met Kim ahead of summit
WASHINGTON: CIA Director Mike Pompeo traveled to North Korea a few weeks ago to meet its leader Kim Jong-un to prepare for a possible summit with US President Donald Trump, according to two people familiar with the matter, raising optimism the meeting could produce a deal.
Pompeo, who’s awaiting confirmation as secretary of state, made the secret visit during the weekend of March 31 and April 1, said the people, who asked not to be identified. The trip comes as the two sides discuss potential sites for the unprecedented meeting between the US and North Korean leaders, which Mr Trump said could come by “early June or before”.
The US president told reporters on Tuesday the administration had “started talking to North Korea directly”. “We have had direct talks at very high levels, extremely high levels with North Korea,” Mr Trump said, after meeting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
“It makes the proposed summit all the more likely to happen,” said Suzanne DiMaggio, director and senior fellow at New America in New York, who facilitated the talks in Oslo that resulted in ailing US citizen Otto Warmbier’s release from North Korea. “It is reassuring that the Trump administration is taking serious steps to prepare for that historic interaction.”
The Pompeo trip, which was first reported by The Washington Post, is part of a global diplomatic scramble after Mr Trump’s March 8 decision to meet Mr Kim to break the decades-long impasse over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. The Central Intelligence Agency chief arrived in North Korea just days after Mr Kim returned from his own surprise visit to Beijing, his first trip outside the country since taking power in 2011.
Direct US contact with Mr Kim is “a pretty dramatic development”, said Adam Mount, a senior fellow with the Federation of American Scientists. “Before the summit can happen, talks have to happen at a very high level” to set an agenda and other details, he said.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Mr Trump hasn’t spoken directly with the North Korean leader. Mr Pompeo, who has expressed a desire to “separate” North Korea from its regime, said there was more room for diplomacy.