The US diplomat briefed them “in detail” on the results of the summit meeting between President Donald Trump and the North’s leader Kim Jong-un held in Singapore on Tuesday, officials said.
In a joint statement after Tuesday’s summit, Kim agreed to the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula and Trump vowed security guarantees for the communist nation on the basis of the “new relations” between the longtime adversaries.
“I will be the person who takes the role of driving this process forward,” he told reporters.
He’s expected to sit down with a high-level North Korean official as early as next week.
Pompeo said the denuclearization process can make significant progress by the end of Trump’s first term in early 2021.
Regarding the issue of “major disarmament”, the former CIA director said: “We’re hopeful that we can achieve that in the next 2 1/2 years, something like that.”
He dismissed criticism about the summit accord without the term “compete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization” (CVID).”Let me assure you that the ‘complete’ encompasses verifiable in the minds of everyone concerned,” he stressed.
“One can’t completely denuclearize without validating, authenticating.”