Pompeo to travel to Pyongyang in October to plan new Trump-Kim summit

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will travel to Pyongyang in October to prepare a second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the Department of State said in a communique on Wednesday.

Pompeo met on Wednesday at the United National General Assembly with his North Korean counterpart, Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho, to discuss the upcoming summit, Efe reported.

At that meeting, Pompeo "accepted Chairman Kim's invitation to travel to Pyongyang next month," said the State Department.

During his visit to North Korea, Pompeo will "make further progress on the implementation of the commitments from the US-North KoreaSingapore summit, including the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea," the statement read, referring to North Korea by its initials standing for Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

He will also "prepare for a second summit between President Trump and Chairman Kim," the statement said.

"Very positive meeting with #DPRK Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho @UNGA to discuss upcoming summit & next steps toward denuclearization of #NorthKorea," said Pompeo on Twitter on Wednesday.

Trump said Tuesday that his second meeting with Kim will occur "quite soon" and explained that Pompeo would be making arrangements for that summit.

At their historic June summit in Singapore, Trump and Kim signed a declaration opening the door to denuclearizing North Korea in exchange for US guarantees for the survival of the Pyongyang regime headed by Kim, although the two leaders did not establish a timetable for those objectives.

In recent weeks, the bilateral dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang had stagnated due to differences on how to move the process forward.

Last week, the US government said that North Korea's denuclearization process must be finalized by January 2021, at the latest, when Trump's term ends.

North Korea, meanwhile, has demanded progress on signing a peace treaty putting an end to the technical state of war existing on the Korean Peninsula in exchange for its taking concrete steps to dismantle its nuclear arsenal, as demanded by the White House.

--IANS

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