Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday he hopes to travel to North Korea “before too long” to arrange a second summit between President Trump and dictator Kim Jong Un, he told reporters Monday.
“Lord willing, I’ll be traveling before the end of the year,” Pompeo said during a press briefing at the United Nations General Assembly.
Pompeo’s last scheduled trip to North Korea in August was canceled one day after he announced his itinerary, after the administration received a recalcitrant letter from the regime. But Kim’s latest summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-In has helped rehabilitate the talks, leading President Trump to announce a plan for a second meeting to follow up on their June summit in Singapore.
“The relationships are very good with North Korea,” Trump said Monday, according to Politico. “We have many things in store. Looks like we’ll have a second summit quite soon.”
Pompeo has led the North Korea talks since Easter. Asked if he was “optimistic” that Kim would dismantle his nuclear weapons program, he replied, “yes.”
“The conversations that we’re having are important, they’re putting the opportunity to complete the denuclearization in place, and we will continue it at every level to have those conversations,” Pompeo told reporters. “Some of them you all will be aware of, some of them you won’t know are taking place. there’s lots going on … to help Chairman Kim get to the right place to honor the promise that he made to president trump in Singapore.”
[Opinion: South Korea’s new deal with North Korea won’t stop Kim from getting the nuclear weapons he wants]
He’s maintaining the optimism despite U.S. concerns that Russia and China are helping North Korea to violate the oil sanctions that the Trump team hopes will induce Kim to change course.
“Step by step, sanction by sanction, and time and time again, Russia is working across the board to undermine the sanctions regime,” Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said last week. “Every time the Security Council overlooks sanctions violations, every time we allow the Russians to bury evidence of violations, we remove incentives for Pyongyang to end its nuclear program.”
Russia and China have rejected American calls to end oil sales to North Korea. But the United States plans to begin “disrupt[ing]” the smuggling operations that have allowed North Korea to obtain oil through ship-to-ship transfers on the high seas.
“The United States has deployed aircraft and surface vessels to detect and disrupt these activities,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert announced Saturday.
