NEW YORK _ With toasts and a dinner of filet mignon, America's top diplomat and North Korea's top negotiator have met for the first time on U.S. soil in a push to determine whether a nuclear summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un can go ahead.
The two "top dogs" were negotiating in New York City, a senior State Department official said Thursday, first with a private dinner Wednesday night and then with formal talks that began on Thursday morning and were expected to continue all day.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and North Korea's powerful former intelligence chief Kim Yong Chol hope to bridge the vast gaps over whether North Korea is prepared to agree to nuclear disarmament _ and what Washington will offer in exchange.
Trump and Kim Jong Un want to stage the summit on June 12 in Singapore. Prospects for that historic meeting have careened up and down as both sides threatened one another and engaged in diplomatic brinkmanship, with Trump announcing on May 24 that he was pulling out _ and then quickly jumping back.
"Between now and if we're going to have a summit," the State Department official said, "they (the North Koreans) are going to have to make clear what they're willing to do."
The official briefed reporters at a hotel in New York City on condition of anonymity.
"And in order for a summit to be successful, the North Koreans have to do things that they have not done before," the official added.
Separate U.S. teams have met with North Korean officials this week in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, and in Singapore, in efforts to work out the complex logistics and agenda for the proposed summit.
Going into any talks, the Trump administration officially is demanding what it calls "complete, verifiable and irreversible de-nuclearization."
That would require Pyongyang to give up its entire nuclear arsenal and weapons building infrastructure and development programs, and submit to intrusive international inspections and monitoring to ensure the shift is permanent.
Privately, there is increasing acknowledgment in the administration that any disarmament will not be immediate but could take years, and will require U.S. concessions along the way _ a step-by-step process that some senior White House aides have previously rejected, citing North Korea's history of reneging on its promises.
North Korea wants ironclad security guarantees and the easing of punitive economic sanctions that the U.S. and the United Nations Security Council have imposed to isolate it diplomatically and strangle its economy.
"What we have to convince them." the State Department official said, that "their nuclear program has made them less secure, that there's a better path forward, that we can work with them."
Pompeo has dangled the possibility of economic aid if North Korea cooperates. In the past, North Korea has also demanded the Pentagon reduce its military presence in South Korea, where about 30,000 U.S. troops are based.
Kim Yong Chol, the most senior North Korean official to come to the United States since 2000, is considered Kim Jong Un's right-hand man, and is a four-star general as well as a former intelligence chief. Pompeo was confirmed as secretary of State last month after 15 months as director of the CIA.
During the Obama administration, Kim Yong Chol was placed on a blacklist of sanctioned North Korean officials. He has been implicated in the North Korean cyber-attack on Sony Pictures, and accused of orchestrating several attacks on South Korean targets, including the torpedoing of a warship that killed 46 sailors.
"I think we are looking for something historic. I think we're looking for something that has never been done before," the State Department official said. "We want to see if we have the makings of a successful summit."
