Conceding setbacks, Trump orders Pompeo to cancel N. Korea trip
WASHINGTON — In a surprise announcement, President Donald Trump on Friday conceded a lack of progress on denuclearization in North Korea and instructed Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo to scrap a planned visit to Pyongyang “at this time,” a setback in the emerging diplomatic detente between the two longtime adversaries.
Pompeo had announced Thursday that he planned to make his fourth visit to Pyongyang early next week and would take Stephen Biegun, the newly appointed special representative for North Korea, to try to break the logjam in the nuclear negotiations.
But the State Department canceled the trip after Trump tweeted that he had asked Pompeo to stay home, for now, “because I feel we are not making sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
The president blamed China, in part, for his decision to cancel the meeting. Beijing, he said, was not “helping with the process of denuclearization as they once were,” a reference to China’s increasingly tense trade dispute with Washington.
But Trump also held out an olive branch, saying Pompeo looked forward to returning “in the near fu- ture, most likely after our Trading relationship with China is resolved.” He added, “In the meantime I would like to send my warmest regards and respect to Chairman Kim. I look forward to seeing him soon!”
A White House spokeswoman said Pompeo met with Trump at the White House shortly before Trump fired off the tweets, suggesting they were not off-the-cuff. A senior negotiator and Korea expert at the CIA, Andrew Kim, was seen entering the White House with Pompeo, CNN reported.
The tweets marked Trump’s first public acknowledgement that North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un was not fulfilling pledges the White House says he made when Kim and Trump met June 12 at a landmark summit in Singapore.
The White House said Kim agreed to start the process of dismantling his nuclear infrastructure, starting by submitting a detailed list of its arsenal of nuclear weapons. Kim has never publicly confirmed that, and his government has pushed the Trump administration to agree to a formal peace treaty to end the Korean War as a precondition for further progress.
Until now, Trump has hailed the summit as a historic success, dismissing critics who said Kim failed to make any commitments he had not made in the past. Over the last two months, North Korea has continued to enrich uranium that could be used as bomb fuel, according to an International Atomic Energy Agency report released this week.
As recently as Monday, Trump was asked by Reuters whether North Korea had taken steps to denuclearize, beyond its highly publicized destruction of entrances to an underground test site in May. “I do believe they have,” he said.
But administration officials expressed concern after Pompeo’s last visit to Pyongyang, on July 5, which was widely seen as unsuccessful. Kim did not receive Pompeo, as he had previously, and the North Koreans leveled tough criticism at Pompeo moments after he left the country.