A new U.S. intelligence assessment has revealed that North Korea does not intend to give up its nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future.
This contradicts President Donald Trump saying that Pyongyang plans to give them up in the future.
Trump continues to pursue a nuclear summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un despite a top defector saying North Korea will never completely give up its nuclear weapons. ‘Everybody knows they are not going to denuclearize,’ said one intelligence official.
Kim Jong Un plans to open a Western hamburger franchise in Pyongyang as a show of goodwill
US President Donald Trump at the White House in May. A new U.S. intelligence assessment has revealed that North Korea does not intend to give up its nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future. This contradicts President Donald Trump saying that Pyongyang plans to give them up in the future
However, Kim Jong Un plans to open a Western hamburger franchise in Pyongyang as a show of goodwill, NBC reported.
Trump previously said he wanted to talk nukes over a burger with the North Korean leader, therefore the opening of the joint is a peaceful gesture to the American president.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump said he would like to meet with the North Korean leader in a low-key setting that entailed ‘eating a hamburger on a conference table.’
This undated picture shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (center) looking at a metal casing with two bulges at an undisclosed location
Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang shows vehicles carrying missiles. A top defector said North Korea will never completely give up its nuclear weapons
The CIA report said Kim thought the establishment could be used to provide food during the talks and would show that he was open to Western investment.
‘If the North Koreans don’t agree in a joint statement that lays out denuclearization -that is, getting rid of their nuclear weapons, having them put under control by international elements – then I don’t think we are going to go very far,’ Chris Hill, a former ambassador to South Korea, said Tuesday.
The current whirlwind of diplomacy and negotiations will not end with ‘a sincere and complete disarmament’ but with ‘a reduced North Korean nuclear threat’, said Thae Yong-ho, who fled his post as the North’s deputy ambassador to Britain in August 2016.
‘In the end, North Korea will remain ‘a nuclear power packaged as a non-nuclear state’,’ Thae told the South’s Newsis news agency.
This picture taken on May 14, 2017 shows Kim Jong-Un reacting during a test launch of a ground-to-ground medium long-range strategic ballistic rocket Hwasong-12 at an undisclosed location
North Korea’s chief delegate Lieutenant General Kim Yong-chol leaves after military talks with South Korea on the south side of the border village of Panmunjom July 26, 2007. North Korea does not intend to give up its nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future
His remarks come ahead of an unprecedented summit between Kim and Trump in Singapore on June 12 where North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes are expected to dominate the agenda.
North and South Korea affirmed their commitment to the goal of denuclearisation of the peninsula at a summit last month, and Pyongyang announced at the weekend it will destroy its only known nuclear test site next week.
However, a top nuclear expert argued that the nuclear disarmament process in North Korea could take as a long as 15 years.
This picture taken on May 14, 2017 and released from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency shows a test launch of the ground-to-ground medium long-range strategic ballistic rocket Hwasong-12 at an undisclosed location
Trump continues to pursue a nuclear summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un despite a top defector saying North Korea will never completely give up its nuclear weapons. ‘Everybody knows they are not going to denuclearize,’ said one intelligence official