Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Friday that the U.S. has the best diplomatic opportunity now with North Korea since the two countries went to war more than six decades ago.
But Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon that negotiations will need to build trust, and he could not say whether the regime will carry out any deal struck on its nuclear weapons program.
“I don’t have a crystal ball, I can tell you we are optimistic right now that there’s opportunity here that we have never enjoyed since 1950,” he said during a meeting with Poland’s defense minister. “So, we’re going to have to see what they produce, but that’s going to have to take diplomats working. I’m not going to calculate anything.”
The comments come after a historic meeting between North Korea leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Thursday, Friday local time, at the Demilitarized Zone drawn after the armistice of the Korea War.
The two leaders talked about denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and pledged a “new history of peace” after Kim’s regime spent last year testing and working towards the completion of nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking major cities across the United States.
President Trump has spearheaded tough new international sanctions to pressure the North to abandon its nuclear program and is set for an historic meeting with Kim in May or June.
It still remains unclear what, if any, deal Trump and Kim can reach to walk the region back from the possibility of war. The Trump administration has said it will not accept a nuclear North Korea.
“This is about international relations. This is about negotiations and we will build through confidence building measures a degree of trust to go forward. So we’ll see how things go,” Mattis said.
