Denuclearising N. Korea a ‘lost cause,’ US intel chief says
WASHINGTON: Convincing North Korea to abandon nuclear weapons is a ‘lost cause,’ America’s top intelligence official said Tuesday, causing concern in the State Department and ally South Korea over an issue of longstanding US policy.
The United States has always maintained it cannot accept North Korea as a nuclear state and, under President Barack Obama, has made any talks with the North conditional on Pyongyang first making some tangible commitment towards denuclearisation.
But in remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper suggested such a policy was based on wishful thinking.
“The notion of getting the North Koreans to denuclearise is probably a lost cause. They are not going to do that. That is their ticket to survival,” Clapper said.
“They are under siege, and they are very paranoid. So the notion of giving up their nuclear capability, whatever it is, is a nonstarter with them,” he added.
His comments reflected an opinion widely-held among North Korea experts but one only expressed in private by senior US administration officials who feel a policy change on North Korea is overdue.
While Clapper may have been seeking to shore up arguments to support the imminent deployment of the US THAAD missile defence system in South Korea, his remarks add a high-profile voice to the growing debate over how the next US president should handle North Korea.
State Department spokesman John Kirby rebuffed Clapper’s position, stressing that “nothing has changed” with the Obama administration’s policy of pushing the North -- through a toughened sanction regime — to give up its nuclear weapons.
“We want to continue to see a verifiable denuclearisation of the ( Korean) peninsula,” Kirby said. — AFP