Pompeo: ‘Real progress’ toward N. Korea summit

The Trump administration pushed ahead with hopes for a summit soon with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, after talks Thursday with envoys from Pyongyang and the announcement of a meeting Friday between the country’s top nuclear negotiator and President Donald Trump.

After discussions in New York, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he was “confident we are moving in the right direction.”

Pompeo maintained that the United States would continue to demand a fully verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. But he acknowledged that significant challenges remained and predicted more “tough moments and difficult times” as the two sides negotiated.

Still, Pompeo cited “real progress” in rescheduling a summit meeting between Kim and Trump that was set for June 12 in Singapore, before the U.S. president canceled it last week.

It would be “nothing short of tragic to let this opportunity go to waste,” Pompeo told reporters after 21/2 hours of discussions with Kim Yong Chol, the former North Korean intelligence chief and top nuclear arms negotiator.

“If these talks are successful, they will truly be historic,” he said.

The diplomacy is expected to continue Friday in Washington, where Trump is planning to receive a letter from the North Korean leader, hand-delivered by his envoys.

In remarks to reporters

Thursday, Trump said it was not clear if the show of tenuous détente would be enough to strike a deal to hold the summit meeting but said negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang — which both

sides hope will end decades of enmity and suspicion — are “in good hands.”

The meeting set for Friday came as a surprise even to some on Trump’s staff and he offered few details when he announced it. It would be a

rare visit similar to one made to Washington in 2000 by Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok, who was then North Korea’s second-most-powerful official. Jo met President Bill Clinton and delivered a letter from North Korea’s leader at the time, Kim Jong Il.

Trump’s decision to personally meet the North Korean envoy displayed his eagerness to be at the center of the action for the high-stakes talks.

A senior State Department official told reporters Wednesday night that it would be natural for the North Korean delegation to pass communications through Pompeo, to then deliver to the president. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said then that he would be surprised if the envoys delivered a letter to the president personally.

KEVIN HAGEN / GETTY IMAGES North Korean envoy Kim Yong Choi leaves his hotel to meet with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in New York on Wednesday. Kim and Pompeo are trying to work out details of the on-again off-again summit between the U.S. and North Korea. Kim is a...

ALEX WONG / GETTY IMAGES U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he met with North Korea’s Kim Yong Chol for 21/2 hours Thursday. President Trump is set to meet with Kim, who may deliver a letter from leader Kim Jong Un, today.