HANOI, Vietnam -- Secretary of State Mike Pompeo shot back at North Korean officials for characterizing U.S. diplomatic behavior as gangster-like, saying Sunday that if that were true, then "the world is a gangster."
"There was a unanimous decision at the U.N. Security Council about what needs to be achieved," Pompeo added. "The enforcement of those sanctions will continue until denuclearization is complete."
Pompeo made the comments from Tokyo, where he met with the foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea after two days of negotiations with a top aide to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang. He later traveled to Vietnam to meet with members of the U.S.-Vietnamese business community in Hanoi.
Pompeo had ended his third visit to North Korea on Saturday after two days of meetings that he had called "productive" and conducted in good faith. Hours later, North Korea's Foreign Ministry accused President Donald Trump's administration of pushing a "unilateral and gangster-like demand for denuclearization."
"People are going to make certain comments after meetings," Pompeo said, blaming the media for the stark differences in how he assessed the talks compared with how North Korea's Foreign Ministry viewed them. "If I paid attention to the press, I'd go nuts, and I refuse to do that."
The secretary of state said North Korean officials "did not push back" when they discussed what he called complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization.
"I know actually what precisely took place," Pompeo said.
The foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea offered support for his approach. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono pledged to stand "hand-in-hand" with Pompeo on nuclear talks "to the end." South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said Pompeo had assured her government that the shared defense posture would remain "ironclad" and "watertight," despite the U.S. cancellation of military exercises.
Pompeo said the discussions with North Korea were only reaffirming what Kim had promised directly to Trump during their summit in Singapore last month.
"The road ahead will be difficult and challenging, and we know critics will try to minimize the work that we have achieved," he said. He added that his talks with senior North Korean officials had "made progress" and included a "detailed and substantive discussion about the next steps towards a fully verified and complete denuclearization."
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe praised Pompeo for his strong leadership on the issue after speaking with the secretary of state.
"This really shows the unwavering bond of the Japan-U.S. alliance," Abe said Sunday.
In South Korea, where President Moon Jae-in has emerged as a key facilitator of U.S.-North Korea talks, the government also suggested it was taking a cautiously optimistic view of events.
"The U.S.-N.K. talks held in Pyongyang this time marked the first step in a journey towards denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," Kim Eui-keum, a presidential spokesman, told reporters Sunday. "As in our old saying: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The start is the most important event in the whole process."
In Hanoi, Pompeo took a different approach toward North Korea, saying that Kim faced a choice similar to Vietnam, which overcame years of war and animosity with the U.S. to attain what he called "once-unimaginable prosperity" and a strong partnership with Washington.
Standing alongside Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Pompeo expressed gratitude for the "deep relationship" America has with its "important partner" Vietnam.
Pompeo said Vietnam's experience since the normalization of relations with the U.S. in 1995 should be proof for North Korea that prosperity and partnership with the U.S. is possible after decades of conflict and mistrust.
"We know it is a real possibility because we see how Vietnam has traveled this remarkable path," Pompeo said.
"In light of the once-unimaginable prosperity and partnership we have with Vietnam today, I have a message for Chairman Kim Jong Un: President Trump believes your country can replicate this path," he said, repeating Trump's pledge to help improve North Korea's economy and provide it with security assurances in return for Kim giving up nuclear weapons.
"It's yours if you'll you seize the moment. This miracle can be yours. It can be your miracle in North Korea as well," Pompeo said.
Until then, the U.S. will continue to enforce sanctions on North Korea "with vigor," Pompeo said.
"The economic sanctions are a different kettle of fish altogether," he said. "The world will see continued enforcement efforts by the United States in the days and weeks ahead."
China, North Korea's principal ally and backer, has been easing sanctions, and Japan reported June 29 another suspected illegal ship-to-ship transfer of goods in the waters around North Korea, the eighth this year.
Pompeo had previously acknowledged that China had modestly eased economic sanctions against North Korea in recent weeks, as relations between Pyongyang and Washington warmed and after summits between Kim and President Xi Jinping of China.
Pompeo had seemed unconcerned about this easing of the economic vise on Pyongyang, and Trump had said that he no longer wanted to use the words "maximum pressure" to describe U.S. policy for North Korea.
But Saturday morning, Pompeo reiterated on Twitter the importance of "maintaining maximum pressure" on North Korea.
Trump administration officials have insisted for months that they will not approve a step-for-step process that gradually unwinds economic and diplomatic sanctions, seeing such incremental incentives as the reason that negotiations failed during the administrations of President George W. Bush and President Bill Clinton.
Because China is responsible for 90 percent of North Korea's foreign trade, Beijing's adherence to any economic sanctions is crucial for such pressure to succeed. Whether Beijing will stick to tougher sanctions now that Trump has declared that the nuclear threat from North Korea has ended is unclear.
Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Lee of The Associated Press; by Nick Wadhams of Bloomberg News; by John Hudson, Adam Taylor and Min Joo Kim of The Washington Post; by Tracy Wilkinson of the Los Angeles Times; and by Gardiner Harris of The New York Times.
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A Section on 07/09/2018