US is willing to offer North Korea unique security guarantees, says Mike Pompeo day before summit
The US Secretary of State said the Donald Trump administration will only accept complete denuclearisation.
Unites States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday said that the US is willing to offer North Korea unique security guarantees if it embarks on “complete verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation”, reported AFP.
Pompeo was speaking to reporters in Singapore on the eve of the historic meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Both leaders arrived in Singapore on Sunday and are set to meet on Tuesday on the resort island of Sentosa.
Pompeo said the Trump administration would only accept complete denuclearisation. He said the US “is prepared to ensure a North Korea free of weapons of mass destruction is also a secure North Korea”, reported CNBC. The US is “prepared to take actions that will provide [North Korea] sufficient certainty that they can be comfortable that denuclearisation isn’t something that ends badly for them,” CNBC quoted Pompeo as saying.
Pompeo said the security guarantees would be “different and unique” than America has been willing to provide before, according to AFP. However, he refused to provide details on what the US was willing to offer North Korea in terms of “security assurances”.
“I’m very optimistic we will have a successful outcome with the two leaders,” he said. “There are only two people that can make decisions of this magnitude. Those two people will sit in a room tomorrow.”
Earlier on Monday, North Korea’s state-run KCNA news agency said Trump and Kim would prioritise “the issue of building a permanent and durable peacekeeping mechanism on the Korean Peninsula, the issue of realising the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and other issues of mutual concern”.
The summit comes months after the tensions between the US and North Korea escalated after Pyongyang stepped up efforts to boost its nuclear weapons programme.