US LAYS OUT TERMS FOR NK SANCTIONS RELIEF

NORTH Korea will not see any economic sanctions lifted until it has demonstrated "complete denuclearisation", US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said.

Mr Pompeo was speaking at a press conference in Seoul with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts.

It comes days after President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un held a historic summit in Singapore. The leaders signed a statement pledging to establish a new relationship.

Mr Kim also reaffirmed its previous promises to work towards the "complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula".

But there has been deep scepticism about the agreement, with observers saying it lacked detail on how North Korea would give up its nuclear weapons and how that process would be verified. Mr Pompeo travelled from Singapore to South Korea to brief the US’s regional allies on the summit, and on Mr Trump’s surprise announcement that he was ending routine US-South Korea military drills. He said the summit had marked a “turning point” in the relationship between the US and North Korea.

Mr Pompeo dismissed a report by North Korean state media that indicated the US would grant concessions to Pyongyang for gradual progress.

He said the US remained “committed to achieving the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation of North Korea”.

These exact terms were not specified in the joint statement signed by Mr Trump and Mr Kim in Singapore, which only made reference to “complete denuclearisation”.