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Pompeo sets off for North Korea nuclear talks
WASHINGTON, July 5, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo left
Washington on Thursday bound for Pyongyang and his latest round of talks with
Kim Jong Un on North Korea’s nuclear arsenal.
Washington’s top diplomat and senior aides took off shortly after 2:00am
and were due in the North Korean capital on Friday, where Pompeo is to stay
overnight for the first time.
President Donald Trump met Kim at a historic summit in Singapore last month
and the US leader has been bullish about hopes for peace, boasting that the
threat of nuclear war is over.
But the statement the leaders signed was short on detailed commitments and
Pompeo has been tasked with negotiating a plan to achieve the “complete
denuclearization” of the Korean peninsula.
This would involve Kim making a detailed declaration of the extent of his
nuclear arsenal and enrichment program, and agreeing a timetable for it to be
dismantled and placed under inspection.
Washington hopes that the process can be underway within a year, but many
expert observers and Trump critics warn that Kim’s summit promise meant
little and the process could take years.
In the meantime, Pompeo and Trump have vowed to keep in the place the
international economic sanctions that they believe forced the North to the
negotiating table in the first place.
After talks late Friday and early Saturday in Pyongyang, Pompeo is due to
fly on to Tokyo to brief his Japanese and South Korean counterparts.
His round-the-world diplomatic voyage will then take him on to Vietnam and
then Abu Dhabi before he arrives in the Belgian capital Brussels to rejoin
Trump for next week’s NATO summit.
BSS/AFP/MSY/1314 hrs