North Korea ‘No Longer A Nuclear Threat’-Says Trump
North Korea ‘No Longer A Nuclear Threat’-Says Trump: OVER the weekend, separate reports citing US officials seemed to confirm what so many experts have long feared — that despite the overtures and sunny proclamations made at the Singapore summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Pyongyang probably has little interest in dismantling its nuclear programme.
Evidence gathered by US intelligence officials in the weeks since the June 12 summit led to the conclusion that North Korea “does not intend to fully surrender its nuclear stockpile, and instead is considering ways to conceal the number of weapons it has and secret production facilities”.
The North Koreans may have stopped missile and nuclear tests in recent months, but as one US official briefed on the latest intelligence told NBC, “there’s no evidence that they are decreasing stockpiles, or that they have stopped their production. There is absolutely unequivocal evidence that they are trying to deceive the US.”
This line of thinking is far removed from Trump’s triumphant declarations. The president tweeted last month that there “was no longer a nuclear threat” posed by North Korea. While many of Trump’s detractors celebrated the cooling of tensions that surrounds the current phase of diplomacy, few shared his optimism about the prospects of “denuclearisation”.
Trump tweeted “Just landed — a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!”
“Intelligence officials and many North Korea experts have generally taken a more cautious view, noting that leader Kim Jong-un’s vague commitment to denuclearise the Korean peninsula is a near-echo of earlier pledges from North Korean leaders over the past two decades, even as they accelerated efforts to build nuclear weapons in secret,” my colleagues Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told a Senate briefing last week that Trump only believed the North Korean threat had been “reduced”, not ended. According to some reports, Pompeo may make another visit to North Korea this week for more talks.
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