After a "good dinner" shared on Wednesday night, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is meeting again today with Kim Jong Un's right-hand man for talks in New York in order to get his historic summit back on track. North Korean leader and US President Donald Trump.
General Kim Jong Un is the first North Korean official to visit the United States in 18 years. He dined for about an hour and a half with the US Secretary of State, with whom they had already met twice in the spring in Pyongyang.
"Have a good working dinner with Kim Jong Un in New York tonight. "Beef, corn and cheese on the menu," Pompeo said on Twitter, accompanied by Andrew Kim, CIA director for Korea.
The State Department posted on its Twitter account photos of the two men who have been put in charge of the two enemy countries' negotiators, as they dine overlooking Manhattan from the apartment windows on the 39th floor of a skyscraper in New York, near the United Nations headquarters.
Pompeo and General Kim will meet again at 09:00 (16:00 Greek time) to continue their talks. The US Secretary of State will then give a press conference at 14:15 (21:15 Greek time).
Their purpose is to determine whether the United States and North Korea are able to reach a common agenda ahead of the June 12 summit in Singapore.
Preparations for the summit are intensifying, a week after Trump published a letter canceling the summit and criticizing Pyongyang's "hostility". But this development was followed by another spectacular upheaval and optimism returned, to the point that Washington now says it is waiting for the historic meeting to take place as originally planned.
But for that to happen, North Korea's "denuclearization" must be "at the heart of the debate" at the summit, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Saunders said. "The president needs to feel that progress is being made in this front ".
Mike Pompeo and Kim Jong Un are thus trying to reconcile expectations that seem incompatible.
Washington demands the "complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization" of North Korea and insists that international sanctions against it will not be eased until the process, which is inherently complicated and lengthy, is completed or well advanced.
Pyongyang, for its part, agrees to discuss denuclearization, but refuses to be unilateral - meaning that US nuclear weapons should be withdrawn from South Korea - and that definition is far removed from that of the Americans. For Pyongyang, its nuclear arsenal guarantees the survival of the regime.
"We need to reassure them that, on the contrary, their nuclear weapons program is exacerbating North Korea's insecurity," he said, adding that Washington was "clearly and unequivocally willing" to offer "guarantees" of its security.
By June 12, North Koreans "must say clearly what they are willing to do," the official added, adding that "we want to see if the conditions for a successful summit are met," but hastened to add that the final decision whether the meeting in Singapore will take place is "100% in the hands of the president".
General Kim, a former North Korean spy chief known as Pyongyang Hawk, a well-known South Korean, starred in the spectacular easing of tension on the Korean Peninsula in 2018, following the crisis in the Korean Peninsula in 2017. with the successive tests of ballistic missiles, the most powerful nuclear weapon North Korea has ever tried, and the imposition of very harsh international sanctions.
The general, vice chairman of the North Korean ruling party's Central Committee, participated in the delegation to the Pyongyang Winter Olympics, attended recent inter-Korean meetings, and also traveled to China twice, alongside the country's leader.
As the day of the summit approaches, three series of meetings between US and North Korean officials are being held at the same time, although the two countries do not officially have diplomatic relations, while until a few months ago their leaders were still exchanging heavy threats and shadowy insults.
In North Korea, Sergei Lavrov
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived in Pyongyang today at the invitation of his North Korean counterpart Ri Jong Ho, the state-run KCNA news agency reported.
However, the agency did not provide further details on the agenda of the visit or what Lavrov will discuss during his contacts in North Korea.