Pompeo reverses course
Says no-nuke timeline comment on N. Korea not his words.
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 the 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 in Pyongyang. They talked about 2021 when they were gathered there. So I was reiterating this as a time line that they were potentially prepared to agree to,” Pompeo said at the State Department.
In the Sept. 19 written statement, Pompeo had announced talks with North Korean officials involving him and newly appointed U.S. envoy Stephen Biegun. That marked a resumption of negotiations stalled over a lack of diplomatic progress since Trump’s historic meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in June.
“This will mark the beginning of negotiations to transform” relations between the U.S. and North Korea “through the process of rapid denuclearization of North Korea, to be completed by January 2021, as committed by Chairman Kim, and to construct a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula,” the statement said.
One week later, Trump held a news conference after the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations and praised his efforts to ease tensions and North Korea’s cessation of nuclear and missile tests.
“We’re not playing the time game,” Trump told reporters Sept. 26. “If it takes two years, three years, or five months, it doesn’t matter. There’s no nuclear testing and there’s not testing of rockets.”
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.
North Korea, which has halted weapons tests and dismantled at least parts of a nuclear and rocket test sites, says it wants an easing of economic sanctions before it gives up its atomic weapons. North Korea’s foreign minister, Ri Yong Ho, told the U.N. last week that “there is no way we will unilaterally disarm ourselves first.”
Separately, South Korea is proposing that the United States hold off on a demand for an inventory of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and accept the verified closure of a key North Korean nuclear facility as a next step in the negotiations, Seoul’s top diplomat said in an interview with The Washington Post.
“What North Korea has indicated is they will permanently dismantle their nuclear facilities in Yongbyon, which is a very big part of their nuclear program,” South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said during a discussion at the South Korean mission to the United Nations. “If they do that in return for America’s corresponding measures, such as the end-of-war declaration, I think that’s a huge step forward for denuclearization.”
Sustained fighting in the Korean War ended with a truce in 1953, but a formal peace treaty has never been signed. In recent weeks, North Korea has demanded almost daily that the United States sign an end-of-war declaration.
U.S. negotiators have tried to get North Korea to provide a list of nuclear facilities and weapons they want dismantled but it failed to secure an agreement even after Trump’s meeting with Kim and three trips to North Korea by Pompeo.
On Tuesday, North Korea’s state-run broadcaster again called the demands for a nuclear inventory “rubbish.”
Stressing the importance of stopping the further production of nuclear materials at the Yongbyon facility, Kang added: “We will have to see an inventory at some point, but that some point can be reached more expeditiously by action and corresponding measures that give the two sides sufficient trust.”