U. S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reported "good progress" in meetings with a top North Korean official Thursday as they sought to salvage an on-again, off-again summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Earlier, Trump told reporters that North Korean
U. S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reported „good progress“ in meetings with a top North Korean official Thursday as they sought to salvage an on-again, off-again summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Earlier, Trump told reporters that North Korean officials may come to Washington on Friday with a letter from Kim. The adversaries are eying the first summit between the U. S. and the North after six decades of hostility.
The high-stakes discussion in New York lasted a little more than two hours, until 11:25 a.m., well before the scheduled end at 1:30 p.m., according to a U. S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the details of the meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity.
After leaving the meeting venue at the residence of the deputy U. S. ambassador to the United Nations, Pompeo tweeted that he and the North Korean had substantive talks on priorities for a potential summit. „Good progress today during our meetings with Kim Yong Chol and his team. #NorthKorea and the world would benefit greatly from the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,“ Pompeo said.
Pompeo was referring to one of the North Korean leader’s closest aides who is leading the negotiators. He is the highest-ranking North Korean official to visit the U. S. in 18 years. He and Pompeo had discussions over dinner of steak, corn and cheese on Wednesday, Pompeo said in an earlier tweet.
The U. S. secretary of state, who spoke with Trump on Wednesday night and with National Security Adviser John Bolton early Thursday, was accompanied by Andrew Kim, the head of a CIA unit assigned to work on North Korea, and Mark Lambert, the head of the State Department’s Korea desk. It was not immediately clear who accompanied Kim Yong Chol on the North Korean side.
„We are doing very well with North Korea,“ Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews before departing on a trip to Texas. „Our secretary of state is having very good meetings.
