Trump cancels Pompeo's trip to North Korea over stalled nuclear diplomacy

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo walks into the Park Hwa Guest House following a meeting with Kim Yong Chol, a North Korean senior ruling party official and former intelligence chief in Pyongyang, North Korea July 6, 2018. [File, Reuters]

U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly canceled his top diplomat’s planned trip to North Korea on Friday, publicly acknowledging for the first time that his effort to get Pyongyang to denuclearize had stalled since his summit with the North’s leader.Trump partly blamed China for the lack of progress with North Korea and suggested that talks with Pyongyang, led so far by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, could be on hold until after Washington resolved its bitter trade dispute with Beijing.

It was a dramatic shift of tone for Trump, who had previously hailed his June 12 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a success and said the North Korean nuclear threat was over, despite no real sign Pyongyang was willing to give up its nuclear weapons.