North Korea is continuing to produce fuel for nuclear bombs in spite of its pledge to denuclearise, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on 25 July, Wednesday, even as he argued that the Trump administration was making progress in talks with Pyongyang.
Asked at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing whether North Korea was still making bomb fuel, Pompeo responded to Democratic Senator Ed Markey by saying: "Yes, that's correct ... Yes, they continue to produce fissile material."
Pompeo declined to respond when asked whether North Korea was continuing to pursue submarine-launched ballistic missiles or whether its nuclear program was advancing generally.
He said he would be happy to answer the latter question if necessary in a classified setting, but suggested public statements on the issue would not help “a complex negotiation with a difficult adversary”.
Pompeo defended what he termed progress in talks with North Korea stemming from an unprecedented 12 June summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in sometimes testy exchanges with sceptical lawmakers from both parties.
He said the United States was engaged in "patient diplomacy" to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, but would not let the process "drag out to no end".
Briefing on his 5-7 July visit to North Korea, Pompeo said he had emphasised this position in "productive" discussions with his North Korean interlocutor, Kim Yong Chol.
He said Trump remained upbeat about the prospects for North Korean denuclearisation, but Kim needed to follow through on his summit commitments.
Pompeo said US North Korea policy was guided by a principle stated by Trump on 17 July that "diplomacy and engagement are preferable to conflict and hostility".
Trump has hailed his summit with Kim as a success, even saying the day after that North Korea no longer posed a nuclear threat, but questions have been mounting about Pyongyang's willingness to give up a nuclear weapons program that threatens the United States.
Kim committed in a broad summit statement to work towards denuclearisation, but Pyongyang has offered no details as to how it might go about this.
Pompeo left Pyongyang on 7 July saying he had made progress on key issues, only for North Korea to accuse his delegation hours later of making "gangster-like" demands.
Pompeo reiterated that North Korea had agreed to denuclearise. However, he did not respond when asked by Senator Bob Menendez whether Pyongyang agreed with the US definition of denuclearisation, except to say he was fully confident North Korea understood this.
Senator Bob Menendez Not Convinced
Menendez, the ranking member of the committee, called Trump's meeting with Kim "a reality TV ‘summit’ that was little more than a photo-op with a brutal dictator".
“We have seen only a vague agreement of promises to make more promises – but with weaker commitments than North Korea has previously made," he said.
Pompeo conceded that there was an "awful long way to go" with North Korea, but in an answer to a question, said the US goal was for North Korea's complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearisation by the end of Trump’s current term in office, which runs until January 2021, and “more quickly if possible”.
Trump said last week there was “no rush” and “no time limit” on the denuclearisation negotiations, but Pompeo has given varying statements about how patient Washington might be.
He rejected Markey's suggestion that the United States was being "taken for a ride" by North Korea, replying, "fear not senator, fear not.”
However, he indicated that no progress had been made on a key US demand that North Korea disclose the range of its nuclear capabilities, saying: “An initial declaration ... is something that is at the very forefront of what ... we think, makes sense to get them to a point where we can verify their full denuclearisation.”
The Republican Chairman of the committee, Bob Corker, criticised Trump for saying that Kim was “very talented” and that “he loves his people,” given the country's serious human rights abuses and the death of US college student Otto Warmbier after imprisonment there.
"Really?" Corker said.
(This story has been published in an arrangement with Reuters.)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)