Trump Says He Won't 'Play Time Game' on North Korea Talks, Pompeo to Visit Pyongyang to Plan Second Summit

Pompeo accepted the invitation during his Wednesday meeting with North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, The Hill reported.

“Secretary Pompeo accepted Chairman Kim’s invitation to travel to Pyongyang next month to make further progress on the implementation of the commitments from the US-DPRK Singapore summit, including the final, fully verified denuclearization of the DPRK, and to prepare for a second summit between President Trump and Chairman Kim,” State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name.

In August, Trump canceled Pompeo’s planned trip to Pyongyang after receiving a letter from North Korea that convinced him the trip would not be worth it.

Last week, Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in concluded their third summit, during which Kim promised to allow international observers watch the dismantlement of a missile test site. Kim also said he would dismantle a nuclear complex --- if the United States takes unspecified corresponding steps.

After the inter-Korea summit, Pompeo said the results warranted a resumed US-North Korean dialogue, and he invited Ri to meet at the UN.

Trump, who met with Kim in Singapore in June, has said a second summit will take place in the “not too distant future”.

Speaking with CBS on Wednesday, Pompeo said the second summit “may” happen in October, but is “more likely sometime after that”.

“It takes a little while to put these together, and we want to make sure we’ve got the conditions just right so the two leaders can be successful,” Pompeo said.

Asked whether a peace declaration to end the Korean War --- a key North Korean demand --- could be signed at the next summit, Pompeo said it’s “hard to know”.

“I don’t want to prejudge precisely where we’ll end up,” he stated, adding that “but make no mistake about it, there is real progress being made and we’re going to continue to work at it until the point in time where, as the President says – we could be wrong, it may not happen – but until such time as we conclude we can’t get this done, we’re going to continue to drive to achieve the – continue the progress which we’ve already made”.

Trump also at a press conference in New York said that “I don’t want to get into the time game", adding that “we’re not playing the time game. If it takes two years, three years or five months, doesn’t matter. There’s no nuclear testing and there’s no testing of rockets”.

In a statement last week, Pompeo said the goal is to have a denuclearization deal by January 2021. On Wednesday, Trump said he told Pompeo not to “get into the time game”.

“I told Mike Pompeo, I said, ‘Mike, don’t get into the time game’,” he said, adding that “we stopped them, they’re taking down plants, they’re taking down a lot of different testing areas. They’re going to take down some more, you’ll be hearing about that very soon. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but you’ll be hearing about that soon”.

He stressed that he has “all the time in the world” because he is not lifting sanctions on North Korea.

Trump during his appearances at the United Nations said that a second summit with Kim will happen in the “not too distant future”.

Critics have slammed Trump for giving North Korea unilateral concessions, including canceling military exercises with South Korea.

The US president said Wednesday he was looking at canceling the exercises for a while, reiterating his criticism that they were too costly. The Pentagon has reported that the exercises would have cost about $14 million, a fraction of its $700 billion budget.

“If you asked [Defense Secretary] Gen. [James] Mattis, for a year and a half, I said, Why don’t we stop these ridiculous, in my opinion, the military games,” he stated, adding that “frankly, I told South Korea you should be paying for these games”.

Still, he said, if need he would restart the exercises "before the generals start them".

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