North Korea’s nuclear plan to be ‘dismantled in a year’

JOHN BOLTON, the White House national security adviser, said yesterday that he believed the bulk of North Korea’s nuclear programme could be dismantled within a year, as US media reported that the hermit nation had recently increased production for nuclear weapons.

Mr Bolton also told CBS’S Face the

Nation that Washington was going into nuclear negotiations aware of Pyongyang’s failure to live up to its promises in the past.

“There’s not any starry-eyed feeling among the group doing this,” he said. “We’re well aware of what the North Koreans have done in the past.”

North Korea agreed at a summit with the US in June to “work toward denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula,” but the joint statement signed by Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, and Donald Trump, the US president, gave no details on how or when Pyongyang might surrender its nuclear weapons.

Mr Trump, in remarks broadcast on Fox News yesterday, said Pyongyang was “very serious” about efforts toward denuclearisation.

“I think they’re very serious about it. I think they want to do it,” he said in a pre-recorded interview. “We have a very good chemistry,” he added.

However, reports published over the weekend by The Washington Post and NBC News cited sources from US intelligence agencies saying they believe North Korea has increased production of fuel for nuclear weapons at multiple secret sites in recent months, and may try to hide these while seeking concessions in nuclear talks with the US.