MIKE POMPEO/NORTH KOREA/NUCLEAR/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday [6-13-18] that the Trump administration hopes to complete ‘major disarmament’ of North Korea within the next 2½ years, even as conflicting accounts of discussions between the two sides left unclear what had actually been agreed to. A day after President Trump’s landmark meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, in Singapore, the two leaders and their governments sought to shape the understanding of their talks to their advantage. But the contours of the vague agreement remained unclear and open to divergent interpretations. North Korea’s state-controlled news media said that Mr. Trump had agreed to a phased, ‘step by step’ denuclearization process rather than the immediate dismantling of its nuclear capability, with the United States providing reciprocal benefits at each stage along the way. Mr. Trump has previously insisted that he will not lift sanctions until North Korea has rid itself of its nuclear weapons. The Trump administration, for its part, insisted that the general wording of the joint statement signed by Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim committed North Korea to an intrusive inspection regime to confirm its ‘complete denuclearization.’ The statement itself, however, did not explicitly use the words ‘verifiable’ or ‘irreversible’ that had been part of the mantra of American officials leading up to the Singapore summit meeting.”
-Peter Baker and Choe Sang-Hun, “Trump Team Sees ‘Major Disarmament’ of North Korea in 2.5 Years,” The New York Times online, June 13, 2018