Pompeo to brief Beijing on Trump-Kim summit

The US secretary of state will brief Chinese officials on Thursday on the just-concluded summit between the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea following a trip to Seoul, where he said the US hopes to achieve "major disarmament" by Pyongyang within two and a half years.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who will make his first trip to China after taking over the State Department in late April, will meet with State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday afternoon before meeting with President Xi Jinping, according to a statement from the US State Department.

What the top diplomat is doing, including his trips to DPRK's two neighbors immediately after the historic US-DPRK meeting, have drawn widespread attention, as Pompeo is charged by US President Donald Trump with leading follow-on negotiations with the DPRK.

In the joint statement from the summit on Tuesday, the US and the DPRK said they would commit to establishing a new relationship, and that the DPRK would work toward denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, while the US commits to providing security guarantees to the DPRK.

Richard Nephew, a nonresident senior fellow on foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, said he believed the most important element of the Trump-Kim statement was the delegation to Pompeo and "a relevant high-level DPRK official" to continue the negotiations, ensuring that there will be a reversion to more technical and detailed talks.

Prompted by reporters in Seoul on Wednesday on if he would like to accomplish major nuclear disarmament within Trump's current term, which ends on Jan 20, 2021, Pompeo said, "Oh yes, most definitively. Absolutely ... you used the term major, major disarmament, something like that? We're hopeful that we can achieve that in the two and a half years."

Pompeo also said he anticipates the US would talk with DPRK officials "fairly quickly after we return to our home countries", with engagement between the two sides likely happening in the next week.

"I don't know exactly what form that will take, but I'm very confident that by some time in the next week or so we will begin the engagement," he said.

In Washington on Wednesday, Trump, back from his first encounter with Kim, hailed the Singapore summit as a major win, declaring the DPRK no longer poses a nuclear threat.

"Just landed - a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office," Trump tweeted. "There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!"

The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that Trump's claim that the DPRK no longer poses a nuclear threat "is questionable considering Pyongyang's significant weapons arsenal".

The US president also reiterated the offer he made at a post-summit news conference on Tuesday that the US would stop military exercises with South Korea while the DPRK negotiated on denuclearization.

"We save a fortune by not doing war games, as long as we are negotiating in good faith - which both sides are!" he wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.

China's foreign ministry has said that the results of the DPRK-US summit are a "correct and important step" to achieve denuclearization, but cautioned the issues concerning the Korean Peninsula are both unique and complex.

huanxinzhao@chinadailyusa.com