Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday that the U.S. wants to see North Korea to take major steps toward nuclear disarmament within the next two years.
Although he wouldn’t disclose a specific timeline, Pompeo told reporters in Seoul that the administration is hopeful that “major, major disarmament” steps will occur before the end of President Trump’s first term in January 2021, the Associated Press reported.
After Trump’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore on Tuesday, Pompeo urged skepticism of North Korean media’s claims that Trump agreed to a step-by-step approach to denuclearization.
Pompeo said “one should heavily discount some things that are written in other places.”
The secretary of state also said that although Trump is “in the lead” he “will be the person who takes the role of driving this process forward.”
He added that the U.S. talks with North Korea will continue “sometime in the next week.”
The two leaders signed an agreement naming four main points, including that the U.S. and North Korea will commit to building a “lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula” and Pyongyang will commit to work toward complete denuclearization.
Pompeo said that the work between Trump and Kim at the summit could not be dismissed, but that there has been a lot more done between the two countries that was not completely encapsulated in the joint statement.
