Donald Trump said on Wednesday he did not have a time frame for North Korea to denuclearize just as his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, plans to visit Pyongyang again next month to set up a second summit for Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. US
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – U. S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he did not have a time frame for North Korea to denuclearize just as his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, plans to visit Pyongyang again next month to set up a second summit for Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“I think we’re really going to do something that’s going to be very important, but we’re not playing the time game,” Trump told reporters in New York, responding to a question at a news conference. “If it takes two years, three years or five months – doesn’t matter.”
Trump’s comments came after Pompeo had a meeting with North Korea’s foreign minister, which the U. S. secretary of state described as very positive. Pompeo will visit Pyongyang again next month to prepare for a second summit.
He wrote on Twitter that his meeting with Ri Yong Ho on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York was to discuss the summit and “next steps toward denuclearization of #NorthKorea.”
“Much work remains, but we will continue to move forward,” Pompeo said.
His visit to Pyongyang next month will be his fourth this year.
Referring to North Korea by the acronym of its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the State Department said the aim of the meeting would be “further progress on the implementation of the commitments from the U. S.-DPRK Singapore summit, including the final, fully verified denuclearization of the DPRK, and to prepare for a second summit…”
Trump held an unprecedented first summit with Kim in Singapore on June 12 that yielded a broad pledge by Kim to “work toward” denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
Kim’s commitments and actions, however, have fallen short of Washington’s demands for a complete inventory of North Korea’s weapons programs and irreversible steps to give up a nuclear arsenal that potentially threatens the United States.
