MIKE POMPEO/NORTH KOREA/NUCLEAR/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump on Friday [8-24-18] abruptly called off a trip to North Korea by his secretary of state, citing a lack of progress in nuclear disarmament talks and acknowledging for the first time that his diplomatic overture to the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, had run into trouble. Mr. Trump said the negotiations had been hindered by a lack of support from China, which he blamed on its bitter trade dispute with the United States. High-level talks with Pyongyang would not resume, he said, until the United States and China resolved those issues. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his newly appointed special envoy were scheduled to travel to North Korea next week to continue talks that have stalled over Pyongyang’s refusal to fully declare its nuclear inventory and Washington’s reluctance to declare an end to the Korean War. But after meeting with Mr. Pompeo, Mr. Trump issued a stream of quarrelsome Twitter posts on Friday afternoon, pulling the plug on the trip and expressing frustration with a diplomatic process that only two months ago he declared had solved the problem of a nuclear North Korea.”
–Mark Landler and Gardiner Harris, “Trump Asks Pompeo to Cancel North Korea Trip, Pointing to Stalled Diplomacy,” The New York Times, online, August 25, 2018