US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un understands that denuclearization must happen “quickly”, warning there will be no sanctions relief for Pyongyang until the process is complete.

Washington remained committed to the “complete, verifiable and irreversible” denuclearization of North Korea, Pompeo added.

“We believe that Kim Jong Un understands the urgency… that we must do this quickly,” he said of the effort to have North Korea abandon its nuclear weapons.

Washington’s top diplomat was in Seoul to brief his South Korean and Japanese counterparts on the summit.

Pompeo insisted at a joint press conference with the two countries’ foreign ministers that there was no daylight among the allies on how to achieve the denuclearization of North Korea.

Contrasting the Trump policy with previous US administrations, Pompeo said: “In the past, they were providing economic and financial relief before… complete denuclearisation had taken place.”

“That is not going to happen, President Trump made that clear.”

Source: AFP