WASHINGTON (Reuters) – North Korea should not expect rewards from talks with the United States until it takes irreversible steps to give up its nuclear weapons, President Donald Trump\u2019s nominee for secretary of state, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, said on Thursday. Pompeo said the historical analysis was \u201cnot optimistic,\u201d when asked at his Senate confirmation hearing if he believed North Korea would agree to dismantle its nuclear program. He said that in past negotiations the United States and the world had relaxed sanctions too quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is the intention of the president and the administration not to do that this time to make sure that \u2026 before we provide rewards, we get the outcome permanently, irreversibly, that it is that we hope to achieve,\u201d Pompeo said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a tall order, but I am hopeful that President Trump can achieve that through sound diplomacy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Trump has said he plans to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in May or early June and hopes the discussions will ultimately lead to an end of North Korea\u2019s nuclear weapons program, which Washington sees as its most pressing security threat.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Trump said meetings were being set up between him and Kim and said the United States would approach the talks respectfully.<\/p>\n
He thanked China for its help in trying to resolve the crisis over North Korea\u2019s development of nuclear weapons capable of hitting the United States. \u201cThey\u2019ve been really terrific at helping us get to some kind of settlement,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMeetings are being set up right now between myself and Kim Jong Un. I think it will be terrific. I think we\u2019ll go in with a lot of respect and we\u2019ll see what happens,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Trump also said trade \u201cnegotiations\u201d between Washington and Beijing were going well, conflicting with China\u2019s statements since the president\u2019s announcements of plans to impose billions of dollars of tariffs on Chinese goods, which have fed fears of an all-out trade war.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are getting along very well, think we\u2019re going to do some great things,\u201d Trump said, adding that getting rid of nuclear weapons was \u201cvery good for them, good for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pompeo said he was optimistic a course could be set at the Trump-Kim summit for a diplomatic outcome with North Korea, but added that no one was under any illusion that a comprehensive deal could be reached at that meeting.<\/p>\n
He brushed aside concerns that the administration\u2019s moves to modify a nuclear deal with Iran could make an agreement with North Korea more difficult. He argued that Kim would be looking to his own interests, including his country\u2019s economy and the \u201csustainment of his regime,\u201d not other historical agreements.<\/p>\n
Pompeo stressed that the aim of a Trump-Kim summit was to get North Korea to \u201cstep away.\u201d Under questioning, he would not take any option off the table, including military ones.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Pompeo said he was not advocating regime change for North Korea and had never done so.<\/p>\n
Last year, North Korea accused Pompeo of favoring such a policy after he told a forum in July it was important to separate the country\u2019s nuclear weapons from the \u201ccharacter who holds the control over them.\u201d In May, North Korea accused the CIA and South Korea\u2019s intelligence service of a failed plot to assassinate Kim at a military parade in Pyongyang.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Trump\u2019s new national security adviser, John Bolton, met separately with South Korea\u2019s National Security Office director, Chung Eui-yong, who led a South Korean delegation that met Kim Jong Un last month, and his Japanese counterpart Shotaro Yachi.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe national security advisers committed to continue coordinating closely,\u201d a White House official said.<\/p>\n
A South Korean diplomat said Chung had a \u201cvery useful\u201d meeting with Bolton on preparations for South Korean President Moon Jae-in\u2019s scheduled April 27 summit with Kim Jong Un and the planned Trump-Kim meeting, but gave no details.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had very informative discussions,\u201d South Korea\u2019s Yonhap news agency quoted Chung as saying. \u201cWe had a wide-ranging exchange of views on various ways to make (the summits) a success and peacefully achieve denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bolton, who took up his post on Monday, has called for North Korea regime change in the past and has previously been rejected as a negotiating partner by Pyongyang.<\/p>\n
At a separate congressional hearing, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the aim was for a negotiated solution to the North Korean crisis.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re all cautiously optimistic that we may be on the right path for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,\u201d he told the House of Representative Armed Services Committee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – North Korea should not expect rewards from talks with the United States until it takes irreversible steps to give up its nuclear weapons, President Donald Trump\u2019s nominee for secretary of state, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, said on Thursday. Pompeo said the historical analysis was \u201cnot optimistic,\u201d when asked at his Senate confirmation hearing if he believed North… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1501"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1502,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501\/revisions\/1502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}