US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday he hoped both North Korea and the
United States could “be a little more creative” when the two sides restart
talks aimed at ending Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.
Speaking
in a radio interview on The Sean Hannity Show, Pompeo did not say when the
negotiations would resume. At the end of June he had said it would likely
happen “sometime in July... probably in the next two or three weeks.”
President
Donald Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last month.
During
the meeting, Trump became the first sitting US president to cross into North
Korea, and he said the pair agreed to restart working-level talks.
Trump
and Kim have met three times and held two summits over the nuclear issue. The
talks in Hanoi in February collapsed without agreement, as the United States
insisted North Korea completely denuclearize and North Korea pushed for relief
from sanctions.
“I
hope the North Koreans will come to the table with ideas that they didn’t have
the first time,” Pompeo said in Monday’s radio interview. “We hope we can be a
little more creative too.”
However,
Pompeo added, “The president’s mission hasn’t changed: to fully and finally
denuclearize North Korea in a way that we can verify. That’s the mission set
for these negotiations.”
While
Trump’s latest meeting with Kim demonstrated a rapport between the two, policy
analysts say the two sides appear no closer to narrowing their differences.
They
have yet even to agree a common definition of denuclearization, which North
Korea has taken to include the US nuclear umbrella protecting Japan and South
Korea.
Washington
has demanded that Pyongyang give up its nuclear weapons unilaterally, and US
officials have said US policy continues to be to maintain sanctions on North
Korea until it gives up its nuclear weapons.
Ahead
of February’s failed summit in Hanoi, US officials had raised the possibility
that while sanctions would remain, they might be willing to take interim steps
such as boosting humanitarian aid or opening liaison offices.
But
at the summit they rejected North Korea’s offer to dismantle its reactor
complex at Yongbyon in exchange for wide-ranging sanctions relief, and the
steps Washington has so far offered have fallen far short of North Korean
expectations.
Pompeo’s
latest remarks come after Chinese President Xi Jinping urged Trump to show
flexibility in dealing with Pyongyang and to ease sanctions on the country “in
due course.”
China,
North Korea’s neighbor and main ally, signed up for UN sanctions after the
North Koreans performed repeated nuclear and missile tests, but has suggested
they could be reduced in return for denuclearization steps.
South
Korean officials have expressed uncertainty that the talks between the United
States and North Korea can take place this month.
On
Sunday, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted unnamed diplomatic sources as
saying that the United States had proposed to North Korea that working-level
talks be held this week and was awaiting a response.
North
Korea has frozen missile and nuclear bomb testing since 2017, but US officials
believe Pyongyang has continued to expand its arsenal by producing bomb fuel
and missiles.
The
State Department said last week it would hope to see a complete freeze in the
North Korean nuclear program as the start of a process of denuclearization.