We’d shield Kim in ‘trade-off’ for nuke nix: Pomp

The United States is prepared to ensure that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un remains in power if the dictator inks a historic nuclear deal with President Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday.

“We will have to provide security assurances to be sure,” Pompeo told “Fox News Sunday.” “This has been the trade-off that has been pending for 25 years. No president has ever put America in a position where the North Korean leadership thought that this was truly possible, that the Americans would actually do this.”

Pompeo made the remarks after his successful trip to Pyongyang last week to lay the groundwork for a meeting between Trump and Kim (inset) in Singapore on June 12.

He returned with three Americans released by North Korea as a gesture of goodwill.

The United States, Pompeo said, wants the “complete verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of North Korea.”

In return, he said, Washington would help the isolated regime economically with private-sector investment to build out their energy grid, infrastructure and agriculture.

That would also mean easing economic sanctions.

“If we get denuclearization, of course there will be sanctions relief. Certainly,” Pompeo said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “There will be more than that.”

North Korea has said it needs nuclear weapons to protect itself from threats by the United States.

Asked whether Washington