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Pompeo Says U.S. in `Better Place’ on North Korea After Letters

Pompeo Confirms Trump's Letter to Kim, Is Ready to Restart Talks

(Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said the U.S. and North Korea were in a “better place” after the leaders of the two countries exchanged letters, suggesting President Donald Trump will again seek to exploit his rapport with Kim Jong Un to revive talks.

Speaking to reporters in Washington before departing on Sunday for a multination trip including the Middle East and the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Pompeo confirmed North Korean state media reports that Trump had sent the letter. The missive had “excellent content,” and Kim, along with his military, read it with “satisfaction,” official Korean Central News Agency reported Sunday.

Pompeo said the U.S. has been preparing for additional talks with North Korea since two previous summits between Trump and Kim, including one in February in Hanoi, Vietnam, failed to secure a deal for North Korea to denuclearize.

“I’m hopeful that this will provide a good foundation for us to continue these important discussions with the North Koreans to denuclearize the peninsula,” Pompeo said of Trump’s letter. “We’re literally prepared to begin at a moment’s notice if the North Koreans indicate that they’re prepared for those discussions.”

A year after Trump and Kim first met in Singapore and held their second and more confrontational meeting in Hanoi, the U.S. and North Korea are stuck in the same spot -- still waiting to begin substantive talks on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program in return for lifting sanctions that have cut off the isolated country’s economy from the world. U.S. officials have sought for weeks to resume the discussions that collapsed after Hanoi.

U.S. officials have sought for weeks to resume the discussions in the four months since Trump walked away from a North Korean offer in Hanoi, to dismantle its Yongbyon nuclear-fuel-processing site if the U.S. lifted crippling sanctions. The U.S. wants North Korea to go further and give up its entire nuclear program, not just Yongbyon.

Pompeo’s trip will also take him to Osaka, where he will join Trump for a meeting of the Group of 20, and then travel with the president to Seoul. There’s no indication that any U.S. officials plan to meet with North Korean counterparts at any point in the trip.

The South Korea government said in statement on Sunday that it was aware of the letter and “sees the exchange of letters between the heads of North Korea and the U.S. as the two countries continuing the momentum of talks, and judges it positively.”

--With assistance from Ros Krasny and Jihye Lee.

To contact the reporters on this story: Nick Wadhams in Washington at nwadhams@bloomberg.net;Mark Niquette in Columbus at mniquette@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, ;Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Jon Herskovitz

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