The Trump administration will not require North Korea to provide a list of its nuclear weapons and missile sites to the US before President Trump meets Kim Jong Un for the second time, according to a report.
Vice President Mike Pence told NBC News that the second meeting between the two leaders will be about creating a “verifiable plan” to disclose the sites.
“I think it will be absolutely imperative in this next summit that we come away with a plan for identifying all of the weapons in question, identifying all the development sites, allowing for inspections of the sites and the plan for dismantling nuclear weapons,” Pence told the network.
After Trump and Kim reached an initial agreement for denuclearization during a June 12 summit in Singapore, Washington has pressed the rogue regime to provide information about all its nuclear operations.
But Pyongyang has refused to provide the information and postponed scheduled meetings with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week in New York City.
The New York Times reported Monday that North Korea was developing 16 hidden bases that produced nuclear material and weapons.
Trump dismissed the report as “fake news” the next day.
The secret ballistic missile bases were identified in a study published by the Beyond Parallel program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, DC-based think tank.
“We can’t negotiate over things they don’t admit having,” said Victor Cha, one of the report’s authors, according to NBC News. “It should take us back to the initial US negotiating point: We need a full declaration.”
Speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of Asian leaders in Singapore, the vice president said: “Everything begins with relationships, but now we need to see results.
He added that there had been “tremendous progress” so far in negotiations, namely the North’s stoppage of missile tests and the return of US hostages and the possible remains of troops killed in the Korean War.
Washington will maintain its pressure on Pyongyang by not lifting its sanctions, Pence added.
“Until we have a plan that is implemented to achieve complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization, we’re going to keep the pressure on,” he said.