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Pompeo to Meet with Top N. Korean Official in NY

by Steve Herman

   WHITE HOUSE --

   The White House says Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will meet later
   this week with a top North Korean official who is on his way to New
   York for talks related to a planned summit between President Donald
   Trump and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un.

   "Kim Young Chol, the Vice Chairman of North Korea, heading now to New
   York," Trump wrote Tuesday on Twitter.

   Hours earlier, video footage showed Kim Yong Chol, vice chairman of
   North Korea's ruling party and former military intelligence chief, at
   the Beijing airport before leaving for the U.S.

   Trump sent a letter last week to Kim Jong Un saying the summit
   scheduled for June 12 would not happen, blaming what he said was
   "tremendous anger and open hostility" shown in a statement by the North
   Korean leader. But negotiations between the two countries have
   continued, including talks Sunday at the Korean demilitarized zone.

   White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says Trump will meet
   with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the White House June 7, as
   the "US continues to actively prepare" for the Trump-Kim summit.

   White House deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin and others from the Trump
   administration flew Sunday to Singapore, the planned site for the
   summit.

   "They traveled to Singapore to focus on logistics preparations," a
   White House official confirmed to VOA News on Monday.

   In a phone call Monday, Trump and Abe "affirmed the shared imperative
   of achieving the complete and permanent dismantlement of North Korea's
   nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and ballistic missile
   programs," according to a White House statement.

   South Korean President Moon Jae-in could also be going to Singapore
   next month for a three-way summit with his U.S. and North Korean
   counterparts, a government official in Seoul said Monday.
   After a surprise meeting Saturday between Kim and Moon Jae-in, the
   South Korean president said the North Korean leader is still committed
   to the "complete denuclearization" of the Korean peninsula.
   The U.S. has called for "complete, verifiable and irreversible"
   dismantling of Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal. North Korea has rejected
   unilateral disarmament and called for denuclearization of the Korean
   peninsula without defining what that entails.

   The North Koreans, after expressing initial enthusiasm about diplomacy
   with the United States earlier this month, did not show up for a
   preparatory meeting in Singapore, threatened to use nuclear force, and
   referred to U.S. Vice President Mike Pence as a "political dummy."
   But North Korean state media subsequently reported on Kim's "fixed
   will" that a summit with Trump should go ahead.
   During Moon and Kim's second border meeting Saturday, the two leaders
   exchanged views on how to prepare for the North's possible summit with
   Trump.
   "It was like an ordinary encounter between friends," Moon told
   reporters. "What's uncertain for Kim is not his intention to
   denuclearize, but the U.S. stance in hostile relations with North Korea
   and whether the U.S. can really secure and guarantee his regime."

   [Ira Mellman and Victor Beattie contributed to this report ]

   Steve Herman is VOA's White House Bureau Chief.