TOKYO: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Saturday he would coordinate closely with Japan during denuclearisation talks with North Korea and promised to raise…
TOKYO: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Saturday he would coordinate closely with Japan during denuclearisation talks with North Korea and promised to raise the issue of the abductions of Japanese citizens in his meetings in Pyongyang.
«We will have a fully coordinated, unified view of how to proceed, which will be what is needed if it is going to be successful in denuclearizing North Korea,» Pompeo told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo. «We will bring up the issue of the abductees as well,» he said.
Abe thanked Pompeo, who arrived in Tokyo on Saturday (Oct 6), for coming to Japan before he meets North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un on Sunday.
Pompeo also said Japan and the United States were in a position to finalise a trade agreement after Abe and U. S. President Donald Trump discussed the issue in New York last month.
The two sides have agreed to start trade talks in an arrangement that, for now, protects Japanese automakers from further tariffs, seen as a major threat to the export-dependent economy. Trump is unhappy with Japan’s US$69 billion trade surplus with the United States — nearly two-thirds of it from auto exports — and wants a bilateral agreement to address it.
