With N Korea on mind, Pompeo arrives in Japan

Tokyo [Japan], Oct 6 (ANI): United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday arrived in Tokyo and is expected to hold talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other high-ranking officials on North Korea's denuclearisation exercise.
Pompeo is also slated to meet Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono. The two leaders are expected to hold discussions on North Korea's nuclear weapons programme and the issue of Japanese citizens' abductions.
After Japan, Pompeo will make a brief stopover at Pyongyang on Sunday, where he is expected to hold talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on denuclearisation and lay out the groundwork for a possible second meeting between Kim and US President Donald Trump.
After these engagements, the US Secretary of State will proceed to Seoul on the same day, before visiting Beijing on Monday (October 8).
Before embarking on his four-nation trip to East Asia on Friday, Pompeo tweeted that the US will "continue its efforts to build out a pathway for North Korea's denuclearisation."
"Looking forward to my trip to Japan, DPRK, ROK, and China to make progress on the commitment that Chairman Kim and @POTUS made in Singapore, and continue our efforts to build out a pathway for the denuclearization of the DPRK," the US Secretary of State wrote on the micro-blogging site Twitter.
On the way to a refuelling stop in Alaska, The Washington Post quoted Pompeo saying that his mission was “to make sure that we understand what each side is truly trying to achieve” and how “each side is seeking to approach that, and how we can deliver against the commitments that were made.”
“Each side has to develop sufficient trust so they can take the actions necessary to get to the end,” Pompeo added.
Kim and Trump had met for the first time at the Capella Hotel in Singapore in June, where the two leaders agreed to work towards North Korea's denuclearisation and granting sanctions relief to Pyongyang in exchange. However, the two countries are engaged in a diplomatic tussle over the same over the past few months.
North Korea, on the one hand, has repeatedly asserted that it has taken various steps to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme and urged the US to recognise its demands for lifting up of sanctions, the Trump administration, on the other hand, has reiterated that it will not lift the sanctions unless the communist nation achieved "complete and fully verifiable denuclearisation." (ANI)