Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted during a cabinet meeting on Thursday that North Korea will follow through on the Kim regime’s vague promise to denuclearize; otherwise, he reasoned that totalitarian dictator Kim Jong Un’s international reputation could take a hit, Reuters reported.
“He made a personal commitment,” Pompeo said, referring to Kim. “He has his reputation on the line in the same way that we do, that says ‘we’re going to create a brighter future for North Korea and we’re gonna denuclearize just as quickly as we can achieve that’.”
Pompeo’s comments came minutes after President Trump touted the agreement he signed with Kim following a summit in Singapore earlier this month.
“The document we signed, if people actually read it to the public, you’d see, ‘Number one statement, we would immediately begin total denuclearization of North Korea’,” Trump said. “Nobody thought that would be possible. If you remember a year and a half ago… everybody was talking about, ‘there’s gonna be a war, there’s gonna be a war with North Korea’.”
During a rally on Wednesday night in Duluth, Minnesota, Trump described his meeting with Kim as “an incredible success.”
Trump also provided a hearty endorsement of Kim’s dictatorship, saying he has confidence he will turn North Korea into “a great, successful country.”
However, North Korea maintains its nuclear capabilities, and the agreement Trump signed with Kim doesn’t detail any sort of verifiable denuclearization process.
Instead, the agreement merely reads, “Reaffirming April 27, 2018, Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to working toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” It does not detail how North Korea will “work toward complete denuclearization” or any sort of inspection process other countries can rely on to verify it is actually doing so, nor does it require Kim to give up any of his nuclear weapons at any particular time.
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