WASHINGTON, June 13 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that Washington was hopeful that major nuclear disarmament on the Korean Peninsula could be achieved in the next two and a half years, said the U.S. State Department on Wednesday.
Pompeo made the remarks while speaking to the traveling press in Seoul on Wednesday, according to a release by the State Department providing the transcript of the briefing.
"We're hopeful that we can achieve that in the next ...two and a half years," said Pompeo when asked if the United States would like to accomplish major nuclear disarmament before President Donald Trump's first term, which will end in January, 2021.
"We're hopeful we get it done. There's a lot of work left to do," said the top U.S. diplomat without going into details about what "major disarmament" refers to.
Pompeo was on a two-day visit to South Korea, where he was expected to meet with senior South Korean and Japanese officials. He flew to Seoul from Singapore after accompanying Trump to the historic meeting with Kim Jong Un, the top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
A joint statement was signed after the Trump-Kim summit, in which the United States was committed to providing security guarantees to the DPRK in exchange for Pyongyang's commitment to a complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Pompeo, who was leading the U.S. negotiation team in talks with the DPRK officials before the summit, told reporters in Seoul that the bilateral talks will resume "some time in the next week or so."
Pompeo also revealed that not all the understandings reached by Washington and Pyongyang before the Singapore meeting has appeared in the joint statement, as the two sides cannot "reduce them to writing."
"There's still some work to do," said the former CIA director.
Pompeo will visit China on Thursday and brief China on the summit in Singapore, said the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Wednesday.