WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday brushed off North Korean insults and demands that he be replaced by someone "more careful and mature" as the chief negotiator in denuclearization talks.
"Nothing has changed," Pompeo said when asked about the comments after a meeting with Japanese officials. "We'll continue to work to negotiate. Still in charge of the team. President [Donald] Trump's obviously in charge of the overall effort, but it'll be my team and special representative [Stephen] Biegun who will continue to lead the U.S. efforts to achieve what Chairman Kim [Jong Un] committed to do," he said.
"He's made that commitment to President Trump multiple times, he's made it to me personally half a dozen times and I am convinced we still have a real opportunity to achieve that outcome and our diplomatic team will continue to remain in the lead."
Pompeo, who has traveled to North Korea four times in the administration's quest to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, has been a frequent target of harsh and personal criticism from North Korean officials.
North Korea's Vice Foreign Minister, Choe Son Hui, said Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton had created an "atmosphere of hostility and mistrust" after Trump's summit in Hanoi with Kim in February ended abruptly without an agreement. And in July, a few hours after Pompeo flew out of Pyongyang after two days of talks, the Foreign Ministry said U.S. demands were "gangsterlike."
Pompeo was again the focus of North Korean anger this week after he said during a Senate hearing that he considers Kim a tyrant. That prompted a Foreign Ministry official to say Pompeo had been "letting loose reckless remarks and sophism of all kinds against us every day."
A statement quoting senior North Korean official Kwon Jong Gun, reported by the Korean Central News Agency, suggested Pompeo was responsible for the collapse of the summit talks in Hanoi. It said that whenever Pompeo "pokes his nose in, talks between the two countries go wrong without any results even from the point close to success."
"I am afraid that, if Pompeo engages in the talks again, the table will be lousy once again and the talks will become entangled," Kwon said. "Therefore, even in the case of possible resumption of the dialogue with the U.S., I wish our dialogue counterpart would be not Pompeo but a person who is more careful and mature in communicating with us."
North Korea has complained that the United States is insisting it completely denuclearize before any international sanctions are lifted, instead of offering sanctions relief in gradual steps as Kim's government prefers.
But Pompeo and Japan's Foreign Minister Taro Kono said on Friday that sanctions will stay in place until North Korea denuclearizes and settles several other issues, including the return of Japanese citizens abducted in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
"Japan is ready to normalize relations with North Korea when its missile, nuclear and abduction issues are taken care of," Kono said.
Kono said Friday's meeting came at "a critical time to align the response to the North Korean situation," noting that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will travel to the U.S. to meet Trump next week and that Trump will soon visit Japan. "Japan and the United States will continue to cooperate on full implementation of all U.N. Security Council resolutions," he said in reference to international sanctions the world body has imposed on the North.
The U.S. is refusing to ease major sanctions until North Korea completely and verifiably dismantles its nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles.
Japan has also advocated a tough approach to the North in contrast to South Korea, which has pushed for a step-by-step approach that would lift some international sanctions as incentives. Pompeo has said some minor relief, including the possible easing of travel restrictions, could be considered in the short- to medium-term but that the crippling sanctions the North most wants removed will not be lifted until it fulfills what he says have been Kim's repeated pledges to Trump to completely denuclearize.
On Thursday, North Korea said it had test-fired a new type of "tactical guided weapon," its first such test in nearly half a year. Although the test didn't appear to be of a banned mid- or long-range ballistic missile that could scuttle chances of resuming the negotiations, it allowed North Korea to show its people it is pushing ahead with weapons development and reassuring hard-line military officials worried that diplomacy with Washington is a sign of weakness.
U.S. and Japanese officials said they had agreed that cyberattacks on either country would be considered an attack covered by Article 5 of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, which gets the U.N. Security Council involved in the event of any armed attack by a third country.
Pompeo also said the United States would continue to raise concerns with Russia over its interference in U.S. elections, as well as in the affairs of other countries.
"We will make very clear to them that this is unacceptable behavior," he said. "We will take tough actions which raise the cost for Russian malign activities. And we will continue to do that."
Information for this article was contributed by Carol Morello of The Washington Post; and by Matthew Lee of The Associated Press.
A Section on 04/20/2019