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Comical: North Korea Demands Mike Pompeo Be Sidelined From Any Future Nuclear Talks

   DailyWire.com

According to the BBC, the hermit kingdom of North Korea has a somewhat unusual demand for all future denuclearization talks with the United States — namely, that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not be a part of them. The demand issued from the world’s last truly Stalinist gulag state follows Pompeo’s (accurately) describing North Korean madman dictator last week as a “tyrant.”

Per the BBC:

North Korea has demanded the removal of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo from nuclear talks, accusing him of “talking nonsense” and being “reckless.”

A senior foreign ministry official said that further talks would be “lousy” if Mr. Pompeo was involved, asking that he be replaced by someone “more careful.” …

Mr. Pompeo visited North Korea four times last year — including for a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Last week, during a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing, Mr. Pompeo was asked if he would agree with descriptions of Mr. Kim as a “tyrant,” he then responded: “Sure, I’m sure I’ve said that.”

This was met with a strong reaction from North Korean foreign ministry official Kwon Jong-gun, who said that Mr. Pompeo “spouted reckless remarks, hurting the dignity of our supreme leadership… to unveil his mean character.”

Alas, apparently this is too much to handle for the easily aggrieved North Korean dictatorship. According to the BBC report, North Korean foreign ministry official Kwon Jong-gun told Korean Central News Agency that “[e]ven in the case of possible resumption of dialogue with the U.S., I wish our dialogue counterpart would not be Pompeo but… [another] person who is more careful and mature in communicating with us.”

As part of the initial Trump-Kim denuclearization summit last summer in Singapore, Kim vowed to cease nuclear testing and the launching of new intercontinental ballistic missiles. Alas, The New York Times reported just this week that Kim defied this vow and tested a new missile.

In February, Trump and Kim met for a second denuclearization summit in Vietnam. As The Daily Wire’s Ryan Saavedra reported at the time, it did not go according to plan:

President Donald Trump walked away from the negotiating table with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un on Thursday in Vietnam after Kim reportedly demanded that the U.S. lift all economic sanctions on North Korea without first agreeing to any kind of serious commitment to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.

“Trump said the summit fell through after the North demanded a full removal of U.S.-led international sanctions in exchange for the shuttering of the North’s Yongbyon nuclear facility,” Fox News’ Gregg Re reported. “Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters that the United States wasn’t willing to make a deal without the North committing to giving up its secretive nuclear facilities outside Yongbyon as well as its missile and warheads program.” …

When pressed for details about why the talks fell through at the post-summit news conference, Trump said: “Basically, they wanted the sanctions lifted in their entirety and we couldn’t do that. They were willing to de-nuke a large portion of the areas that we wanted, but we couldn’t give up all of the sanctions for that. So we continue to work and we’ll see, but we had to walk away from that particular suggestion. We had to walk away from that.”

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