President Trump said Wednesday that he expects his second meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will take place “sometime early next year.”
“We’re going to change it because of trips that are being made. We’re going to make it at another date. We’re very happy how it’s going with North Korea. We think it’s going fine,” Trump told reporters at a post-election press conference.
“We’re in no rush. We’re in no hurry.”
Trump’s remarks came as his administration postponed a Thursday meeting between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a top North Korean official.{mosads}
Pompeo’s meeting with Kim Yong Chol, the former head of North Korea’s spy agency who has been leading nuclear talks for North Korea, will now take place at an unspecified “later date,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement released late Wednesday.
Pompeo had planned to travel to New York to meet with the North Korean official. Trump noted on Wednesday that Pompeo’s meeting will be rescheduled.
The administration has made little progress on North Korea’s denuclearization since Trump and Kim met in Singapore in June.
At the summit, the two leaders signed a short statement that pledged a “denuclearization” of the Korean peninsula, but the statement did not include specific details on the goal or how the two countries planned to achieve it.
Trump and Kim had said they would like to hold a second summit, but no meeting has yet been put on the books.
North Korea is now seeking sanctions relief as a bargaining chip in giving up its nuclear weapons, but Pompeo over the weekend said that the United States would not lift sanctions until it could verify that the isolated nation had halted its missile and nuclear programs.
“The sanctions are on, the missiles have stopped, the rockets have stopped. …. I’d love to take the sanctions off, but they [North Korea] have to be responsive, too. It’s a two-way street. But we’re not in any rush at all. There’s no rush whatsoever,” Trump said.