BREAKING: Pompeo says N. Korea needs to denuclearize before Trump’s term is up! [AND MORE]

Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the US has put a timeline on N. Korea’s denuclearization, that it should happen before Trump’s term is up in two years:

ASSOCIATED PRESS – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the United States wants North Korea to take major nuclear disarmament steps within the next two years.

Pompeo is laying out an ambitious timeline for denuclearization following President Donald Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong Un. He says he won’t disclose specific timelines but that the administration is hopeful that “major, major disarmament” steps can occur before the end of Trump’s first term. The term ends in January 2021.

Pompeo is also urging skepticism after North Korean official media said Trump had agreed to a step-by-step approach to denuclearization. Pompeo isn’t being specific but says that “one should heavily discount some things that are written in other places.”

I guess that makes sense, considering that if Trump is defeated in 2020 Kim Jong Un might vacate the deal of feel he doesn’t have to comply with it. Seems reasonable.

 
IN-DEPTH VERIFICATION:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un understands that “there will be in-depth verification” of nuclear commitments in any deal with the U.S.

Pompeo is pushing back on criticism that the joint agreement signed by Kim and President Donald Trump includes no mention of verifying North Korean nuclear disarmament. Ahead of Trump’s summit with Kim, the U.S. had said disarmament must be “complete, verifiable and irreversible.”

But Pompeo tells reporters that it’s silly to focus on the lack of the word “verifiable.” He says that’s because the agreement does refer to “complete” denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Pompeo says that “in the minds of everyone concerned,” the word “complete” encompasses “verifiable.”

Pompeo says: “I am equally confident they understand that there will be in-depth verification.”

Let’s hope they do understand this and don’t fight us when we attempt to verify it. This is another place where I could see all of this going wrong.

 
WAR GAMES:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises will resume if North Korea stops negotiating in good faith over its nuclear program.

Pompeo is in South Korea a day after President Donald Trump met with Kim Jong Un and announced the U.S. would freeze what he called “war games” with North Korea.

Pompeo says he was there when Trump talked about it with Kim. He says Trump “made very clear” that the condition for the freeze was that good-faith talks continue. He says if the U.S. concludes they no longer are in good faith, the freeze “will no longer be in effect.”

Pompeo says Trump was “unambiguous” in conveying that to Kim.

This is a big one. Some are saying this was a big concession and one we shouldn’t have given KJU. But considering that the joint military exercises aren’t due to happen again until next year, I think it was smart to give it to KJU…for now. There’s plenty of time to evaluate how serious he is before the next ‘war games’ training begins.


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