Pompeo spoke to Wang about the countries’ shared efforts to denuclearise North Korea on Thursday, the US State Department said on Friday
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has stressed to China the importance of continued enforcement of sanctions on North Korea to press it to give up its nuclear weapons, after warning of signs of backsliding by Beijing.
The State Department said Pompeo had spoken to his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on Thursday and discussed efforts “to achieve our shared goal of the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.”
Pompeo reiterated that North Korea would have a bright future if it denuclearised and emphasised “the continued importance of full enforcement of all relevant UN Security Council resolutions related to North Korea,” the department said in a statement.
It said this was especially important when it came to preventing North Korea’s illegal export of coal and imports of refined petroleum through ship-to-ship transfers prohibited by the United Nations.
US President Donald Trump, who held an unprecedented summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on June 12 to try to persuade him to give up a nuclear weapons programme that threatens the United States, urged continued sanctions efforts by Beijing last week and said the border between China and North Korea was “getting a little weaker now.