Pompeo arrives in N Korea
Secretary of State to ‘fill in’ details with Kim
SEOUL: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in North Korea yesterday with the daunting task of ensuring that Pyongyang’s nuclear commitments line up with President Donald Trump’s promises.
Mr Pompeo struck a cautious note while en route to the isolated nation — his third such trip since April — saying he was seeking to firm up pledges that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un made last month during his Singapore summit with Mr Trump.
The secretary of state left Washington with no public agenda and stated goals, other than lunch with Kim Yong-chol, a senior aide to Kim Jong-un.
“I’m seeking to fill in some details on those commitments and continue the momentum toward i mplementation of what the two leaders promised each other and the world,” Mr Pompeo said. “I expect that the DPRK is ready to do the same,” he added, referring to North Korea’s formal name.
Kim Yong-chol and Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho greeted Mr Pompeo at Pyongyang Sunan International Airport around noon local time, or 11pm Thursday in Washington.
The visit by the top American diplomat was the first high-level meeting since Mr Trump and Kim Jong-un agreed on June 12 to “work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula,” without elaborating on what that would look like or how long it would take. Mr Trump has since declared that North Korea was “no longer a nuclear threat” and said Americans can “sleep well,” even though the regime holds as many as 60 nuclear bombs and missiles that could reach the US.
Pressure on Mr Pompeo to produce more tangible assurances from North Korea grew in the days before his visit with reports indicating that Mr Kim continued to ramp up his weapons production before the summit with Mr Trump. The reports published by independent researchers and media organisations detailed efforts to increase fuel production, build more missile launchers and expand a key rocketengine manufacturing facility.
While travelling to North Korea, Mr Pompeo said on Twitter that he had spoken with Mr Trump. “The president told me he believes that Chairman Kim sees a different, brighter future for the people of North Korea. We both hope that’s true,” he said.
Although Mr Kim has pledged to halt nuclear-weapons tests and demolished a facility used for all six of the country’s atomic bomb detonations, he has said nothing about production and made no commitment to unilaterally disarm.
Mr Pompeo told a US Senate committee last month that the administration was seeking transparency from the North Koreans about what nuclear material they have, the hardware and the missiles that could deliver warheads, as well as other weapons of mass destruction. Mr Pompeo had previously said that the US would seek “major disarmament” from Mr Kim by the end of Mr Trump’s first term, or about two and a half years from now.
While nuclear arms experts have said that would be a tough deadline to meet even if Mr Kim committed to it, US National Security Adviser John Bolton has demanded an even faster timetable. He said on CBS’s Face the Nation last weekend that Mr Pompeo would visit North Korea to discuss “how to dismantle all of their WMD and ballistic missile programs in a year”.
Mr Trump has so far shown little concern that Mr Kim might not meet US expectations, saying while en route to Montana on Thursday that the summit saved the lives of “50 million people”, or roughly the population of South Korea. “In the meantime for eight months, you’ve not had one rocket launch, missile launch and you haven’t had one nuclear test,” Mr Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Among Mr Pompeo’s delegation were seasoned North Korea negotiators including National Security Council official Allison Hooker, Central Intelligence Agency officer Andy Kim and Sung Kim, the US ambassador to the Philippines. Unlike his previous visits to the country, Pompeo was accompanied this time by American journalists.
Mr Pompeo may also work to repatriate the remains of American soldiers missing in North Korea for almost 70 years. North Korea is holding about 200 sets of remains from among the some 5,300 American military personnel believed still lost in the country during the Korean War, according to Department of Defence estimates.
The Pyongyang stop comes at the start of a week of travel for Mr Pompeo, who continues on to Tokyo, Hanoi, Abu Dhabi and Brussels, where he’s scheduled to accompany Mr Trump to this year’s annual summit of the Nato alliance.