Mike Pompeo took journalist’s questions yesterday after a two-day meeting with top North Korea official Kim Yong-chol. He did state that he was unsure whether the proposed meeting between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un will go ahead but maintained that “real progress” had been made despite “a great deal of work to do”. It is well-known that a major roadblock is denuclearisation, mostly because of North Korea’s concern over rhetoric coming from top White House officials.
Whilst all this was happening, North Korea and Russia have agreed to meeting of their top leaders to mark the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two nations.
According to KCNA, Kim Jong-un and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov came to an agreement in Pyongyang.
Positive signs
The North Korean official Kim Yong-chol is expected to deliver a letter to Washington on Friday with Trump saying that there are positive signs, however, there is concern over the US President’s reaction because he is known to take hard-line approaches when it comes to negotiations such as these. Top US officials are often contradicting the US President with national security advisor John Bolton stating that he would like negotiations to be done quickly because a long-term process could wring out concessions from the US, whereas Trump is open to a slower approach.
North Korea will be wary of negotiating with the US after multiple times that top US officials like Bolton and Mike Pence have stated that the ‘Libya model’ is plausible, despite the obvious notion that Libya are in turmoil since NATO-backed intervention. The world will be watching on how these negotiations pan out but the US administration’s bluster and hard-line approach could jeopardise the negotiations.
