美国务卿蓬佩奥访朝旨在推进朝鲜无核化

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo will visit Pyongyang next week to press forward with the Trump administration’s efforts to force North Korea to denuclearise, according to four people familiar with his plans.

据四位知情人士透露，美国国务卿迈克蓬佩奥(Mike Pompeo)将于下周访问平壤，推进特朗普政府迫使朝鲜无核化的努力。

he visit will be the first senior level face-to-face contact since US president Donald Trump met leader Kim Jong Un in a landmark summit in Singapore this month. Their joint declaration was widely derided for lacking concrete detail, but US officials have been trying to take the next steps.

此次访问将是自美国总统唐纳德特朗普(Donald Trump) 6月在新加坡与朝鲜领导人金正恩(Kim Jong Un)举行里程碑式峰会以来，美朝高层首次面对面接触。特金会后发表的联合声明因缺乏具体细节而受到广泛嘲笑，但美国官员一直在试图迈出接下来的步骤。

US officials told cnn that Mr Pompeo had cancelled a planned meeting with his Indian counterpart, due in Washington on July 6, in order to fly to Pyongyang. The declaration had stipulated Mr Pompeo would hold “follow-on” talks with an unnamed senior North Korean official “at the earliest possible date”, but had given no timeline.

美国官员们告诉cnn，蓬佩奥取消了原定7月6日在华盛顿与印度外长的会晤，以便飞往平壤。美朝联合声明曾称，蓬佩奥将“尽早”与某一位朝鲜高官举行“后续”商谈，但没有给出任何时间表。

“Mr Pompeo had to cancel the meeting because of important travel related to North Korea,” a US official said. A second US official said an official announcement was expected in the coming days.

“由于是与朝鲜有关的重要旅行，蓬佩奥不得不取消会晤，”一位美国官员表示。另一位美国官员表示，预计未来几天会正式宣布消息。

Mr Pompeo, who has visited Pyongyang twice before in a bid to establish whether the regime is serious about dismantling its nuclear weapons programme, has assumed the lead role in negotiations first as CIA director and then as America’s chief diplomat.

蓬佩奥曾两次访问平壤，以确定平壤政权是否认真考虑废除其核武器计划，他已成为美方的首席谈判代表——先是作为中央情报局(CIA)局长，现在是作为美国最高外交官。

Vipin Narang, a nuclear policy expert at MIT, said the visit was good news but he underscored the enormous task ahead. “The gulf in interpretations of the Singapore summit are massive,” he said.

麻省理工学院(MIT)核政策专家维平纳兰(Vipin Narang)表示，这次访问是个好消息，但他强调了未来的艰巨任务。“双方对新加坡峰会的解读存在巨大鸿沟，”他表示。

While the Trump administration insists it has made clear to Pyongyang its demand for “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearisation”, North Korea has talked only of the denuclearisation of the entire Korean peninsula. Such a broad ambition could put the US commitment to its ally South Korea at risk, or lead to demands for the US to move its troops, or even nuclear submarines and bombers, out of the region. Washington would be unlikely to accept such demands.

尽管特朗普政府坚称，它已向平壤方面明确表明“完全、可核查和不可逆转的无核化”要求，但朝方只是谈论整个朝鲜半岛的无核化问题。如此宽泛的野心可能会使美国对盟友韩国的承诺面临风险，或导致要求美国将其部队，甚至核潜艇和轰炸机彻底撤出该地区。华盛顿方面不太可能接受这样的要求。