WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo heads back this weekend to North Korea as the contours of a potentially historic deal begin to take shape, even if Kim Jong Un’s regime publicly stays firm in demands.
The top US diplomat will pay his fourth visit this year to the onetime US pariah as he looks to arrange another summit between Kim and President Donald Trump, who has declared himself “in love” with the strongman.
Pompeo arrives Saturday in Japan, a treaty-bound US ally which has been privately uneasy about Trump’s rapid reconciliation with the totalitarian state, before he meets Sunday in Pyongyang with Kim.
Just a year after Trump threatened to wipe out North Korea, Pompeo is hopeful that diplomacy can coax Kim to give up the regime’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.
“This is a long-term problem. This has been outstanding for decades. We’ve made more progress than has been made in an awfully long time,” Pompeo told reporters on Wednesday.
Pompeo has repeatedly declined to be drawn out publicly on the shape of an eventual agreement. The United States has called for a comprehensive accord and rigorous enforcement of sanctions on North Korea in the meantime.
South Korea -- whose left-leaning president, Moon Jae-in, helped pave the way for Trump’s diplomacy and who will meet Pompeo in Seoul after he visits Pyongyang -- gave a preview of what a deal may look like.
South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha, in an interview with The Washington Post, said that the North could agree to dismantle Yongbyon, its signature nuclear site.
In exchange, the United States would declare a formal end to the 1950-53 Korean War -- which closed with an armistice rather than a full-blown peace treaty -- but North Korea would stop short of delivering an exhaustive list of its nuclear facilities, she said. (AFP)