U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's planned meeting with a senior North Korean official Thursday in New York City has been postponed.
The State Department issued a statement early Wednesday morning saying the meeting "will now take place at a later date. We will reconvene when our respective schedules permit." The statement did not give a reason why the meeting was called off.
"We are going to make it another day," President Donald Trump said Wednesday when asked about the development at a news conference. He added that "there is no rush whatsoever" to conclude a denuclearization pact with North Korea, adding that he hopes to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un again sometime early next year.
Pompeo was slated to hold talks with Kim Yong Chol, a senior adviser to the North Korean leader. In announcing the meeting earlier this week, the State Department said the two men would discuss "making progress on all four pillars of the Singapore Summit joint statement, including achieving the final, fully verified denuclearization" of North Korea.
Kim and Trump signed an agreement at their landmark summit in June to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons, but the two sides have been at odds over the pace of Pyongyang's efforts to end its nuclear weapons program.
North Korea warned last week that it will consider reviving its nuclear weapons program if the United States fails to lift its crippling economic sanctions against the regime. It is also seeking a peace treaty with the United States and South Korea that will formally end the 1950-53 Korean War that split the communist North from the democratic South.
