Report: Sec of State Pompeo to Visit North Korea Next Week

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo plans to travel to North Korea next week to discuss the country’s denuclearization plans, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing four people familiar with his plans.

U.S. officials said Pompeo had canceled a meeting with his Indian counterpart in Washington on July 6 in order to fly to Pyongyang, the newspaper reported. His visit would mark the first to North Korea since President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held their June 12 summit in Singapore.

On Wednesday, Pompeo told lawmakers he was confident that North Korea understood the scope of the U.S. desire for complete denuclearization as the two countries negotiate after the summit.

“We’ve been pretty unambiguous in our conversations about what we mean when we say complete denuclearization,” Pompeo told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on funding for the State Department.

Trump has drawn some criticism from national security analysts for an agreement that emerged from his June 12 summit with Kim that had few details on how Pyongyang would surrender its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

A day after that summit Trump said on Twitter there “is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.” Pompeo told the Senate subcommittee that “we have reduced risk.”