Pompeo to tout N Korea ties upturn at Security Council

America´s top diplomat will brief the UN Security Council Thursday on fast-moving North Korea denuclearisation efforts while still seeking to convince world powers that it is too early to ease sanctions.

Days before he is due to fly to Pyongyang to push ahead with what would have been an unimaginable project a year ago, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will portray his boss Donald Trump´s unconventional diplomacy as the main reason for a dramatic turnaround.

Trump and Pompeo are leading the US delegation at the ongoing United Nations General Assembly in New York, which has seen Washington sharply at odds with friends and foes alike on a raft of issues in the first two days.

With Trump due to head back to Washington on Thursday, it will be left to Pompeo to brief the 15-member Security Council on how the US hopes to nail down its efforts to persuade Kim Jong Un´s regime to renounce its nuclear ambitions once and for all.

On Wednesday, Pompeo met on the sidelines of the General Assembly with his North Korean counterpart, Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, to discuss plans for his fourth trip to Pyongyang.

He accepted an invitation from Kim to return to Pyongyang in October to move ahead on efforts for "the final, fully verified denuclearization of the DPRK," the State Department said, referring to the North by its official name of the Democratic People´s Republic of Korea.

Pompeo will also try to arrange a second summit between Trump and Kim, whose meeting in June in Singapore was the first ever between sitting leaders of the longtime enemy states.

Trump has hailed his initiative with North Korea as a signature foreign policy success and heaped praise on Kim.

Just one year earlier, he mocked Kim as a "rocket man" at the United Nations and threatened a forceful military response.

Critics question how much North Korea has actually changed.