Pompeo Meets With North Korea’s Kim, Trump Confirms

Local Editor

US President Donald Trump confirmed Tuesday that talks between the United States and North Korea are taking place at "very high levels," hours before news broke that CIA Director Mike Pompeo had met personally with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shortly after Pompeo's nomination to be US secretary of state.

"We have also started talking to North Korea directly," Trump told reporters while meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Mar-a-Lago Tuesday afternoon. "We have had direct talks at high levels - extremely high levels - with North Korea."

Earlier reports cited US officials reporting that Pompeo made the secret visit to North Korea over the Easter weekend and met with Kim to discuss a planned summit with Trump.

Pompeo's trip made him the most senior US official ever known to have met with Kim and provided the strongest sign yet to Trump's willingness to become the first serving US president ever to meet a North Korean leader.

Pompeo's conversations fueled Trump's belief that productive negotiations were possible with North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, but far from guaranteed, according to a US senior official briefed on the trip.

The visit, a second US official said, was arranged by South Korean intelligence chief Suh Hoon with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Yong Chol, and was intended to assess whether Kim was prepared to hold serious talks. 

Pompeo, one of Trump's most trusted advisers, returned to report that it was worth continuing to pursue the possibility of a summit, but added that no site had been selected from lists of options, and consequently no logistical arrangements had been made so far, the second official said. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team