On Sunday, White House national security adviser John Bolton addressed a recent report by the Washington Post which said North Korea was intent on deceiving the United States on the number of its nuclear weapons and was concealing nuclear production facilities.
Bolton, who was a guest on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” said that if North Korea cooperated, its nuclear arsenal could be dismantled within a year, provided that Pyongyang discloses fully “all [of North Korea’s] chemical and biological, nuclear programs, ballistic missile sites.”
He asserted that the United States has devised a program – but not put it into action yet – and added that he was confident “Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be discussing this with the North Koreans in the near future about really how to dismantle all of their [weapons of mass destruction] and ballistic missile programs in a year,” CNN reports.
Bolton also stressed that it was in Pyongyang’s interest to cooperate and denuclearize as soon as possible and thus ensure that sanctions against it are eliminated and aid by South Korea, Japan and other countries is provided.
The national security adviser did not, however, discuss the disturbing Washington Post report which fully contradicts President Donald Trump’s assertions North Korea no longer posed a nuclear threat.
“I am not going to comment on any reports, true, untrue, or partially true, about intelligence,” he said. “I will just say this: Not answering the specific reports we’ve seen over the weekend … we are using the full range of our capabilities to understand what North Korea is doing.”
Bolton further pointed out that Trump will not make the mistakes of prior administrations and approach discussions with North Korea with naïveté.
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