WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo heads to Asia next week with an agenda dominated by a stalemate in the Trump administration’s nuclear talks with North Korea and impasses with China over trade, Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Pompeo travels to Thailand Tuesday for the Association of Southeast Asian National Regional Forum where North Korea’s launch of medium- range missiles this week and increasingly assertive Chinese maritime actions will be major issues. U.S. officials declined Friday to say if Pompeo plans specific meetings on either matter in Bangkok but acknowledge they are major concerns.
North Korea has suggested it won’t attend the annual meeting, at least at the foreign minister level, as it has done in the past, according to the officials. The officials were not authorized to preview Pompeo’s trip publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
But the officials would not rule out direct discussions between the two sides, noting that President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had agreed to resume negotiations at their most recent meeting at the demilitarized zone in June.
Pompeo said Thursday he was hopeful the talks on getting North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons and long-range missiles – which have stalled several times since Trump and Kim’s first summit in Singapore last year – could re-start in the coming weeks.