Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday the U.S. will have to assure North Korean leader Kim Jong Un it will not push for regime change as a precondition for a historic summit with President Trump.
“We will have to provide security assurances to be sure. This has been the trade-off that has been pending for 25 years,” Pompeo said during an interview with “Fox News Sunday.”
On the same topic, Pompeo “only time will tell” how the talks go, when prompted to talk about the same issue on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
Trump’s meeting with Kim is set for June 12 in Singapore, the overarching objective of which is to negotiate the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
Pompeo said on “Fox News Sunday” Kim’s promise Saturday to destroy its nuclear test site in 10 to 12 days was “good news for the American people and the world.”
On June 12th summit with North Korea, @SecPompeo tells Chris: “We will have to provide security assurances to be sure.” pic.twitter.com/AUNGRdDwHc
— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) May 13, 2018
He added the U.S. would facilitate American private-sector infrastructure and agriculture support to North Korea in exchange for “complete, verifiable, irreversible” denuclearization.
“If we’re going to get to this historic outcome, both sides have to be prepared to take truly historic measures to achieve it,” Pompeo said. “We are not to the place yet where we should be remotely close to declaring that we’ve achieved what it is we want. There’s a great deal of work that remains.”
