Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday the U.S. has made “real progress” in talks with North Korea toward a denuclearization summit, but isn’t sure yet the meeting will take place as planned on June 12 in Singapore.
“We’ve made real progress in the past 72 hours toward setting the conditions” for a summit, Mr. Pompeo told reporters in New York City after emerging from talks with North Korean vice chairman Kim Yong-chul. “I’m confident we’re moving in the right direction.”
On the central question for the summit, however, Mr. Pompeo stopped short of saying that Pyongyang is committed to giving up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.
“We’ve had lots of conversations around that,” he said. “I believe they are contemplating a path forward, a strategic shift that their country has not been prepared to make before.”
He added, “I’ve had some difficult conversations with them. They’ve given it right back to me.”
With the meetings in New York concluding, Kim Yong-chul will now travel to Washington to deliver a letter to President Trump Friday from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Mr. Trump last week canceled the summit with Kim Jong-un, citing Pyongyang’s “open hostility” toward the U.S. But since then, talks have been accelerating on several fronts, including South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, meeting with Mr. Kim.
Other U.S. and North Korean teams also have been meeting in various locations, including Singapore.
Mr. Pompeo said the proposed summit “offers a historic opening for President Trump and Chairman Kim to boldly lead the United States and the DPRK [North Korea] into a new era of peace, prosperity and security.”
“Our two countries face a pivotal moment in our relationship in which it could be nothing short of tragic to let this opportunity to go to waste,” Mr. Pompeo said.
He said he has been very clear in all negotiations that Mr. Trump’s position is “the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”
For decades, North Korea’s reclusive communist regime has viewed the development of nuclear weapons as the key to its security and its survival.
Mr. Pompeo said the main challenge is still to convince North Korea that Mr. Trump is sincere in his assurances that the U.S. doesn’t want regime change in Pyongyang. The U.S. has about 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea.
“This administration completely understands how hard this problem is,” Mr. Pompeo said. “There is a long history where North Korea has viewed its nuclear program as providing the security that it needed for the regime. The effort now is to come to a set of understandings which convince the North Koreans of what President Trump has said.”
It was Mr. Pompeo’s third meeting with Kim Yong-chul; he has also had two lengthy meetings with Kim Jong-un. He said those negotiations have included many conversations around “the denuclearization that the world demands, and the security assurances that would be required for us to allow them to achieve that.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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