Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s second in command has become the latest Trump administration official to acknowledge that President-elect Joe Biden will take over the White House in January.
Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun said a “new team will soon be in place” to continue on with talks to try to push North Korea toward denuclearization.
“A new team will soon be in place, and I will fully share with them all of our experience, recommendations, and perhaps a little hard-earned wisdom,” Biegun said to a think tank audience in Seoul, South Korea.
“Among the points I will convey to the new team is this: The war is over; the time for conflict has ended, and the time for peace has arrived.”
Biegun’s comments come as President Trump still refuses to concede and continues to challenge the election results, repeatedly making unsupported claims of voter fraud.
Pompeo, meanwhile, has avoided acknowledging Biden’s 2020 victory and in November joked that there would be a “smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”
Biegun, who was in South Korea this week to meet with security officials, also took the time to hit Pyongyang for squandering an opportunity for more denuclearization talks, which stalled after Trump first met with North Korean Kim Jong Un in Singapore in 2018.
The two signed a general agreement calling for denuclearization of the isolated kingdom, but failed to reach a deal at their second meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2019. Talks have moved forward little since then.
North Korean counterparts “too often have devoted themselves to the search for obstacles to negotiations instead of seizing opportunities for engagement,” Biegun said.
He called for North Korea to resume talks under the incoming Biden administration.