Published : Nov. 22, 2018 - 08:58
WASHINGTON -- US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday that he continues to hope for a second meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un early next year.
Pompeo was scheduled to meet a senior North Korean official in New York earlier this month to plan the second summit and discuss details of the North's commitment to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (Yonhap)
The meeting was abruptly postponed a day before it was supposed to take place, with the US attributing it to scheduling problems.
"We continue to negotiate with them to get them to implement what Chairman Kim, who I've had the chance to meet with on a number of occasions, to get Chairman Kim to complete the commitment that he made to fully and verifiably denuclearize North Korea," Pompeo said on the Pete Mundo Morning Show.
"This would be great for America, great for the region, and wonderful for the North Korean people as well, and I do hope that there'll be a summit between the two leaders early in 2019," he said.
Trump and Kim's first summit in June yielded an agreement to work toward "complete" denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in exchange for security guarantees from the US.
The two sides have yet to agree to concrete steps amid North Korean demands for sanctions relief and US insistence on achieving full and verified denuclearization first.
Trump has also said he expects to meet Kim early next year. (Yonhap)