PYONGYANG, July 6, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
arrived in Pyongyang Friday to press Kim Jong Un for a more detailed
commitment to denuclearisation following the North Korean leader’s historic
summit with President Donald Trump.
Pompeo was greeted in the North Korean capital by Kim’s right hand man Kim
Yong Chol and Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, pool reports said.
Since meeting Kim in Singapore last month Trump 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 clear commitments.
Kim agreed to the “complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula” — a
stock phrase favoured by Pyongyang that stopped short of longstanding US
demands for North Korea to give up its atomic arsenal in a “verifiable” and
“irreversible” way.
Pompeo has been tasked with negotiating a plan that Washington hopes would
involve Kim declaring the extent of his nuclear weapons program and agreeing
a timetable for it to be dismantled.
“Our leaders made commitments at the Singapore summit on the complete
denuclearisation of North Korea,” Pompeo had earlier told reporters
travelling with him on a journey that included a stop at Yokota, a US airbase
in Japan.
“On this trip I’m seeking to fill in some details on those commitments and
continue the momentum toward implementation of what the two leaders promised
each other and the world,” he said.
“I expect that the DPRK is ready to do the same,” he added, using the
initials of North Korea’s official name.
The top US diplomat, who arrived with senior aides in Pyongyang Friday
morning, is to stay overnight in the North Korean capital for the first time.
In a tweet the Secretary of State said he was “looking forward to
continuing our work toward the final, fully verified denuclearisation of
#DPRK, as agreed to by Chairman Kim”.
Washington hopes that “complete” denuclearisation can begin within a year,
but many expert observers and Trump critics warn that Kim’s summit promise
meant little and the process could take years — if it ever starts. In the
meantime, Pompeo and Trump have vowed to keep in place the international
economic sanctions that they believe forced the North to the negotiating
table in the first place.
The US delegation was set to have lunch with Kim Yong Chol, a senior North
Korean official and former spy master, on arrival in Pyongyang.
After talks late Friday and early Saturday in the capital, 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
Abu Dhabi before he arrives in the Belgian capital Brussels to rejoin Trump
for next week’s NATO summit.