North Korea has promised to destroy all of its facilities for making fuel for nuclear bombs, a top US negotiator said, in a sign that US President Donald Trump is seeking clearer disarmament steps from his upcoming summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
North Korea has committed “to the dismantlement and destruction” of all its uranium and plutonium-enrichment facilities in talks with US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and South Korean leaders, US Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun said in a speech on Thursday.
The pledge goes beyond the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, which Kim has previously offered to demolish, Biegun said at Stanford University in California.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“This complex of sites extending beyond Yongbyon represents the totality of the North Korean plutonium-reprocessing and uranium-enrichment programs,” Biegun said.
He added that North Korea wanted the US to take “corresponding measures” — which he would discuss with North Korean officials in upcoming talks.
Biegun’s comments — his first public speech in five months as Pompeo’s special envoy — offered a rare insight into the US administration’s approach to North Korea that officials had previously declined to provide.
Kim has made no commitments to let North Korea’s arsenal be inspected or dismantled since agreeing to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” in his first meeting with Trump in June last year.
Earlier in the day, Trump said that he would next week announce the time and place of the summit, which is expected to take place late this month in Vietnam.
While Trump continues to say that North Korea’s lack of missile and nuclear tests for more than a year were key achievements, leaked intelligence reports and analyses of satellite imagery suggests that Kim has used the time to stockpile more nuclear material and missiles.
However, Trump’s top intelligence officials have expressed doubt that the US will ever achieve its goal of “total denuclearization.”
US Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats on Tuesday told a US Senate committee that the intelligence community “continues to assess that it [North Korea] is unlikely to give up all of its WMD [weapons of mass destruction] stockpiles, delivery systems and production capabilities.”
“North Korean leaders view nuclear arms as critical to regime survival,” Coats said.
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