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Pompeo Hopes US, North Korea to Be More ‘Creative’ at Denuclearisation Talks

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has expressed hope that both Washington and Pyongyang will demonstrate more "creative" approaches at the denuclearisation talks, offering ideas that have not been raised before.
Sputnik

"I hope the North Koreans will come to the table with ideas that they didn’t have the first time. We hope we can we be a little more creative too", he said.

The secretary of state added that the US goal of achieving full and verifiable denuclearisation of North Korea remained unchanged.

In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Pompeo pointed out that the 30 June talks between US President Donald Trump and North Korea's chairman Kim Jong-un, when the former briefly stepped over the demarcation line into North Korean soil, had given the United States "another chance to sit down with [North Korea] and have another conversation".

The statement comes after the Yonhap News Agency reported on Sunday, citing sources that Washington had offered to hold denuclearisation talks  with Pyongyang at a working level next week.

The negotiations have stalled since February's summit between Trump and Kim, which failed to produce any tangible results, despite the fact that the meeting had been highly anticipated. At the time, the US president said that since North Korea was not willing to denuclearise the specific areas that Washington wanted while seeking full sanctions removal, it was not appropriate to sign an agreement at that point.

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