Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview broadcast Sunday that his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is “a big deal.”
“I think it’s a big deal. It is important, every step along the way matters. The objective remains the same: complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization. That has been the administration’s goal,” Pompeo told ABC’s “This Week.”
“Anytime you get the chance to meet face to face with someone, you get a better read about what they’re thinking, whether they’re really prepared to do something that is historic and different,” he added.
“My goal was to try and identify if there was a real opportunity there. I believe there is. Who knows how the ultimate discussions will go. There is a lot of work to do, but I am very hopeful that the conditions that have been set by President Trump give us this chance.” {mosads}
The remarks come after Pompeo met with Kim, who last week became the first North Korean leader to cross into the South for a landmark meeting with President Moon Jae-In.
President Trump on Friday rejected criticism that he could be played by Kim, who he plans to meet with in the coming weeks.
“We’re not going to be played, OK? We’re going to hopefully make a deal, if not that’s fine,” Trump said Friday.
“President Trump has put economic pressure on the North Koreans and it appears to have given us an opening — this real opportunity for something that would be transformative for the world if we can achieve it,” Pompeo said on ABC.
“We hope a number of things could be achieved. I talked about getting the release of the American detainees. And then we talked a great deal about what it might look like, what this complete, verifiable, irreversible mechanism might look like,” he added.
“And so, when the two leaders, the only people that can make those decisions will be in a room together, they can set the course. They can chart the outcome. They can then direct the teams to go deliver that outcome. And the best outcome would be that, that the two agree that they’re going to get there and charter their teams to go make that happen.”