Pyongyang had agreed to allow inspectors into a key nuclear testing site that North Korea has claimed it blew up, a down payment on the country’s commitment to denuclearize the country, The New York Times informed.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose planned trip to the North in August was canceled by President Donald Trump because of a lack of progress, described his few hours on the ground in Pyongyang, the capital, as a “good trip.”
“There’s a lot of logistics that will be required to execute that,” Pompeo told a news briefing in Seoul before leaving for Beijing, adding that both sides were “pretty close” to agreement on the details of a second summit, which Kim proposed to Trump in a letter last month, Reuters informed.
The office of President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, who was briefed by Pompeo after his North Korea trip, said that the Washington and Pyongyang had agreed to hold a new summit meeting between their leaders as early as possible.
But American officials appear hesitant to give Kim the kind of power-enhancing legitimacy that he extracted from his meeting with Trump in Singapore in June, without first seeing significant steps by the North to account for, and ultimately dismantle and ship out of the country its nuclear weapons and materials and its long-range missiles.
Pompeo has been cautious and careful in describing his encounters with Kim, in sharp contrast to Trump’s enthusiasm, which reached a peak two weeks ago when he announced to a political rally that he and the North Korean dictator “fell in love.”
After his latest trip, Pompeo said nothing about making significant breakthroughs, except for the North’s agreement to allow inspectors into Punggye-ri, a network of underground tunnels where the North has conducted all of its nuclear tests, including one last September that it claimed was a successful test of a hydrogen bomb.
However, according to the New York Times, missing from Pompeo’s account of his two-hour meeting with Mr. Kim, which was followed by a 90-minute lunch, was any mention of the first step toward denuclearization: an inventory from the North of all its nuclear weapons, its production and storage sites, its missiles and missile launchers.
Reuters also adds that Stephen Biegun, new U.S. nuclear envoy who was accompanying the secretary, said he offered on Sunday to meet his counterpart, Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui, “as soon as possible” and they were in discussion over specific dates and location.
The inspections of the nuclear site could be significant, as North Korea blew up the tunnels in Punggye-ri in late May, inviting cameras to witness the explosion. However, the pictures did not make clear whether the destruction was limited to the tunnel entrances, which could be cleared later, or included the tunnels themselves, where the nuclear tests occur, the Times notes.
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