Pompeo retreats from 2021 denuclearization goal

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo distanced himself Wednesday from a previously stated goal of getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons by the end of President Donald Trump’s first term in January 2021.

Trump himself said last week that he doesn’t want to get into a “time game” over how long it will take North Korea to denuclearize.

Pompeo, who’s preparing for a trip to North Korea, said 2021 wasn’t his goal. But that date was referred to in a Sept. 19 statement in his name on the outcome of a summit between the leaders of South and North Korea.

Pompeo told reporters that he had just been restating a potential timeline that was discussed at that summit.

“My comment about 2021 was not mine. I repeated it, but it was a comment that had been made by the leaders who had their inter-Korean summit Pompeo in Pyongyang. They talked about 2021 when they were gathered there. So I was reiterating this as a timeline that they were potentially prepared to agree to,” Pompeo said at the State Department.

Pompeo on Sunday is scheduled to make his fourth visit to Pyongyang since spring. He said he’s optimistic he’ll come away with a plan for a second summit between Trump and Kim and progress on a “pathway for denuclearization.” He said there’s continuing international support for economic sanctions to remain on North Korea in the meantime.

Meanwhile, North Korea’s hacking operations to gather intelligence and raise funds for the sanction-strapped government in Pyongyang may be gathering steam.

The U.S. security firm FireEye raised the alarm Wednesday over a North Korean group that it says has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars by infiltrating the computer systems of banks around the world since 2014 through highly sophisticated and destructive attacks that have spanned at least 11 countries. It says the group poses “an active global threat.”

It is part of a wider pattern of malicious state-backed cyberactivity that has led the Trump administration to identify North Korea — along with Russia, Iran and China — as one of the main online threats facing the United States. Last month, the Justice Department charged a North Korean hacker said to have conspired in devastating cyberattacks, including an $81 million heist of Bangladesh’s central bank and the WannaCry virus that crippled parts of Britain’s National Health Service.