Pompeo, at U.N., Says North Korean Leader Must Keep Vow to Denuclearize

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/20/world/asia/pompeo-haley-north-korea.html

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UNITED NATIONS — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited the United Nations on Friday to deliver the message that there would be no sanctions relief for North Korea until its leader does “what he promised the world he would do” by surrendering the North’s nuclear weapons.

At a news conference after his meetings, Mr. Pompeo also said that North Korea, under its leader, Kim Jong-un, was continuing to find ways to skirt the sanctions aimed at dismantling the North’s nuclear arms program. Mr. Pompeo said he urged other members of the United Nations Security Council to “step up their enforcement efforts” on the sanctions, which he called “critical to our achieving this goal” of pressing Mr. Kim to give up his country’s nuclear weapons.

His visit to the United Nations, Mr. Pompeo’s first as secretary of state, appeared partly intended to quell speculation that the Trump administration might be willing to relax its position on the sanctions, now that President Trump and Mr. Kim have established a personal relationship through their summit meeting in Singapore last month.

Mr. Trump has said that the North Korean leader pledged at that meeting that he was prepared to denuclearize. Mr. Kim has yet to take any concrete steps in that direction, raising doubts about his intentions.

“It will take full enforcement of sanctions for us to get there,” Mr. Pompeo said. “It will also take Chairman Kim following through on his personal commitments that he made to President Trump in Singapore.”

He said that “the countries of the Security Council are united on the need for final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea, as agreed to by Chairman Kim.”

Mr. Pompeo’s visit to the United Nations came a day after Russia and China blocked an American request for immediate action by the Security Council to stop what the United States has called rampant cheating on North Korean petroleum import limits under the sanctions.

Diplomats said Russia and China, which are North Korea’s principal trading partners, argued that more time was needed to study the merits of the American complaint, under a procedure that deferred any action for six months.

The United States ambassador, Nikki R. Haley, speaking alongside Mr. Pompeo at the news conference in the lobby of the United Nations headquarters, was more blunt than he was about the Chinese and Russian blocking maneuver.

“The problem that we are encountering is that some of our friends have decided that they want to go around the rules,” Ms. Haley said.

“We put pressure today on China and Russia to abide and be good helpers through this situation, and to help us continue with denuclearization,” she said.

While China and Russia went along with other Security Council members in agreeing to the North Korean sanctions last year — the most severe the United Nations has ever imposed — there have been signs that both countries are not enforcing them strictly.

Mr. Pompeo said that he remained optimistic about the outcome of negotiations with North Korea, and that he hoped that one day the country “could be in our midst here at the United Nations, not as a pariah, but as a friend.”

Asked what the United States wanted to see in further talks with North Korea, Mr. Pompeo said, “We need to see Chairman Kim do what he promised the world he would do.”

Mr. Pompeo also said he had welcomed plans for a second summit meeting between Mr. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

The White House announcement on Thursday of that meeting blindsided Mr. Trump’s director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, who learned about it while he was being interviewed by Andrea Mitchell of NBC News at a security conference in Aspen, Colo.