by WorldTribune Staff, April 13, 2018

U.S. President Donald Trump will avoid the failures of his predecessors and refrain from offering North Korea any rewards before Kim Jong-Un “permanently, irreversibly” commits to denuclearization, Mike Pompeo said at his confirmation hearing to be the next secretary of state on April 12.

“It is the intention of the president and the administration not to do that this time to make sure that before we provide rewards, we get the outcome permanently, irreversibly, that it is that we hope to achieve,” Pompeo said at the Senate hearing.

Pompeo, the current CIA director, was named by Trump to replace Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

“No one is under any illusions we’ll reach a comprehensive agreement through the president’s meeting,” with Kim, Pompeo said. “But to set up the conditions acceptable to each side, for the two leaders who will ultimately make the decision about whether such an agreement can be achieved and then set in place, I’m optimistic that the United States government can set the conditions for that appropriately.”

Then Trump and Kim “can have that conversation” and “set us down the course of achieving the diplomatic outcome that America and the world so desperately need,” Pompeo said.

Meanwhile, the top national security advisers of South Korea and the United States met in Washington on April 12 as both sides prepare for summits with North Korea.

Chung Eui-Yong, head of the presidential National Security Office, met with U.S. national security adviser John Bolton.

“We had very informative discussions,” Chung told reporters at Dulles Airport as he departed for Seoul. “The success of both the inter-Korean summit and the North Korea-U.S. summit is important, so we had a wide-ranging exchange of views on various ways to make them a success and peacefully achieve denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

Bolton also met separately with his Japanese counterpart, Shotaro Yachi.

“Ambassador Chung and Secretary General Yachi are the first national security advisers to meet with Ambassador Bolton since he assumed the role of U.S. national security adviser,” a U.S. National Security Council spokesperson said in an email to Yonhap.

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