US secretary of state Mike Pompeo will visit Pyongyang next week to press forward with the Trump administration’s efforts to force North Korea to denuclearise, according to four people familiar with his plans.
The visit will be the first senior level face-to-face contact since US president Donald Trump met leader Kim Jong Un in a landmark summit in Singapore this month. Their joint declaration was widely derided for lacking concrete detail, but US officials have been trying to take the next steps.
US officials told the Financial Times that Mr Pompeo had cancelled a planned meeting with his Indian counterpart, due in Washington on July 6, in order to fly to Pyongyang. The declaration had stipulated Mr Pompeo would hold “follow-on” talks with an unnamed senior North Korean official “at the earliest possible date”, but had given no timeline.