Does this image prove Kim lied to Trump over nuclear deal?
NORTH Korea has secretly stepped up its nuclear weapons programme, despite a promise to disarm, according to US intelligence sources.
The claim makes a nonsense of Donald Trump’s statement last month, shortly after his summit with dictator Kim Jong Un, that ‘there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea’.
Satellite imagery appears to show ongoing operations at the regime’s main uranium enrichment plant in Yongbyon, 60 miles north of the capital Pyongyang.
The US intelligence sources – who spoke on condition of anonymity to NBC News in America – believe the communist state is running several secret nuclear sites, whose existence Kim may not even admit to.
One official said: ‘There’s no evidence they are decreasing stockpiles, or that they have stopped their production.’ Another added: ‘There is absolutely unequivocal evidence that they are trying to deceive the US.’
Experts at the American website 38 North, which monitors North Korea, published satellite images showing that the Yongbyon nuclear site was expanding at a ‘rapid pace’, with evidence of activity at the cooling units and of vehicles transporting materials.
Trump has suspended military exercises in the Korean peninsula after North Korea stopped carrying out missile and nuclear tests.
Kim had signed a joint statement at the Singapore summit last month in which he promised to ‘ work toward denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula’.
Just last week, Trump said that North Korea was destroying four of its nuclear test sites and that the process of ‘total denuclearisation... has already started’. However, more than a dozen of Trump’s own spies have broken rank to warn the President was being ‘deceived’ by Kim as the regime quietly increased production in recent months while conducting diplomatic talks.
Washington sources last night said that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will fly to Pyongyang on Friday for talks with Kim’s top aides on the denuclearisation plan.
The discussions will address CIA reports t hat North Korea has increased its production of nuclear weapons fuel, according to a US Congressional source.
One official told NBC: ‘There are lots of things that we know that North Korea has tried to hide from us for a long time.’
MP Mark Pritchard, a member of All-Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea, said: ‘The Americans will not be taken for fools. North Korea must keep its commitments, which should all be verifiable, before any sanctions are lifted.’
Last night, the White House declined to comment on the claims.
‘No evidence they are decreasing stockpiles’