North Korea should disarm by 2021, Mike Pompeo says as critics slam Trump-Kim summit agreement
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the US expects ‘major, major disarmament’ before Trump’s first term is up on January 20, 2012
The United States hopes to achieve “major disarmament” by North Korea within the next two-and-a-half years, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday, as he defended President Donald Trump against charges that he made too many concessions in his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
The agreement hammered out by Trump and Kim reaffirmed the North’s commitment to “work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula”, but did not indicate when Pyongyang would give up nuclear arms – leading to much vocal concern that they would not follow through.
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The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, for example, said that “there is little in the joint communique or in North Korean statements to demonstrate that Kim has committed to do what Mr. Trump claims” and “there are no details about timing or process or specific goals”.
The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof started his post-summit editorial by saying: “It sure looks as if President Trump was hoodwinked in Singapore”, adding that “Trump seems to have won astonishingly little”.
And Trump’s announcement that he wanted to remove US troops from South Korea – which reportedly caught Seoul off-guard - led to former US Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman, who helped draft a multilateral deal to curtail Iran’s uranium enrichment capabilities, saying that Trump “doesn’t believe in allies”.
Responding to the barrage of criticism in Seoul a day after Trump met Kim in Singapore, Pompeo said he “most definitively” expected to see nuclear disarmament before Trump’s current term ends on January 20, 2021.