Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday said North Korean denuclearization is the “top national security priority,” but the Trump administration is also focused on “appropriate countermeasures” to anticipated Russian meddling in the 2018 midterms, knuckling down against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s power grab in Caracas and much, much more.
In his first appearance on Capitol Hill as America’s top diplomat, Mr. Pompeo, in stark contrast to his predecessor Rex W. Tillerson’s notorious rigidness, churned through foreign policy questions — from Iran and Nicaragua to China and Cuba — during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.
Facing only limited friction from lawmakers even when he refused to comment or offer specifics on politically sensitive matters, the new secretary even leveled up a delicate rhetorical dance in response to bipartisan frustration over President Trump’s push for major cuts to the State Department and USAID budgets.
Mr. Pompeo said Wednesday he would support the reductions, although he also vowed “ensure the State Department has every dollar it needs to achieve its mission around the world.” Republican-led House and Senate rejected the cuts last year by passing stopgap measures to keep the diplomacy and aid budgets funded at close to pre-Trump levels.
“It is time for other nations,” he said, to “devote greater resources toward common objectives, whether it’s crushing terrorists, stopping Iran’s malign behavior, strengthening the NATO alliance [or] eradicating infectious diseases.”
Several lawmakers praised Mr. Pompeo, who spent a year as CIA director before Mr. Trump tapped him to take over at State, for his fast work in recent weeks securing the release of three American’s held on dubious terms by North Korea.
The secretary said the administration is holding to its plan for a major summit with Kim Jong-un on June 12, but will “walk away” if the North Korean leader is not serious about denuclearization.
“A bad deal is not an option,” Mr. Pompeo said. “The American people are counting on us to get this right. If the right deal is not on the table, we will respectfully walk away.”
The assertion came as he navigated a range of other matters. While he did not elaborate on specifics, Mr. Pompeo told lawmakers the administration will fight “continued efforts” by Russia to meddle in the November midterms.
He also pushed back at the Foreign Affairs Committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, who said he’s “worried that the administration is giving Russia a pass because [Russian President Vladimir] Putin supported President Trump over Hillary Clinton.”
Mr. Pompeo said the administration is engaged in hardball foreign policy aimed at “countering Russia.”
“This administration has taken enormous efforts to push back against Russia that haven’t been done in an awfully long time either here in the United States or frankly from our partners who are even more threatened by Russia than we are,” he said.
Russian meddling in the 2016 election remains sticky for Mr. Trump amid special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation into potential ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.
The secretary raised eyebrows at another point, telling lawmakers mysterious symptoms reported by at least one U.S. government employee in Guangzhou, China, are “very similar and entirely consistent” with symptoms felt by American diplomats sickened last year in Cuba by what many believe was a sonic or electromagnetic wave attack on the U.S. embassy in Havana.
On a separate front, Mr. Pompeo said the administration is preparing to “respond reciprocally” to Mr. Maduro for kicking out the top two U.S. diplomats in Caracas on allegations they worked for the CIA and tried to sabotage the country’s presidential election last weekend.
But the secretary offered few specifics. The administration already toughened financial sanctions on the Maduro government Monday, the latest development in tensions that have soared anew between the U.S. and Venezuela following Mr. Maduro’s victory in the election, a vote the White House and many others international community branded a “sham.”
Mr. Pompeo also expounded on the hard-line policy speech he gave Monday on Iran, asserting that while Mr. Trump pulled out of the Iranian nuclear accord two weeks ago, the administration has not shut down the possibility of a new agreement with Tehran.
The list of demands for Iran to meet in order to avoid a severe increase in U.S. economic sanctions is long and includes halting all support for Hezbollah, Hamas and other proxy groups around the Middle East. But Mr. Pompeo said the White House continues to “hold out the prospect of a new deal for Iran, if it changes its behavior.”
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