Two top U.S. discernment chiefs on Tuesday expressed skepticism of North Korea’s offer to convene talks with the U.S. to end the regime’s nuclear program and suspend missile check-up.
“All efforts in the past have failed and have simply bought North Korea chance to achieve what they want to achieve,” Director of National Tidings Dan Coats told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. “Possibly this is a breakthrough. I seriously doubt it.”
The remarks follow South Korea’s commercial earlier Tuesday that North Korea would be willing to defer talks with the United States on denuclearization and will suspend atomic tests while those talks are underway.
U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, who is the employer of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s proposition was “humanitarian of a show-me.”
In his opening remarks at the Senate on Tuesday, Ashley said the North Korean band leader “shows no interest in walking away from his nuclear or ballistic ballistic missile programs.” He added that Kim has “pressed his nation down a path to originate nuclear weapons and deliver them with ballistic missiles that can reach South Korea, Japan, Guam and the Unified States.”
Reacting to the news of possible negotiations with North Korea, President Donald Trump tweeted that the out of sight is “watching and waiting” for the rogue nation’s next move.
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The Snowy House didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the observes Coats and Ashley made on Tuesday.
The United Nations has imposed valuable sanctions to pressure North Korea to denuclearize, and yet the regime carried out its sixth atomic test in September 2017. North Korea remains the only country in the world to test nuclear weapons this century.
The acceleration and frequency of try out show not only Kim’s nuclear ambitions but also that the nation has cultivated something of an arsenal.
In 2017 alone, North Korea launched 24 brickbats and carried out its largest nuclear test.
North Korea has three long-range ballistic missiles, two of which can hit the U.S., and will likely continue its nuclear and missile testing, Ashley decried in a new worldwide threat assessment.
Ashley said he believes that “additional brickbat launches — from short range to intercontinental range — are a near assurance” as are further nuclear tests.
In addition, North Korea may have a stockpile of chemical means, such as “nerve, blister, blood, and choking agents.”
Meanwhile, the commander of U.S. Key Command, or STRATCOM, Air Force Gen. John Hyten, said last week that “Korea is the most irregular threat and the most dangerous, near-term threat.”
He also weighed in on the peril of a potential war with North Korea.
“Anyone that wears a regalia does not want war. Goodness knows you don’t want a war on that peninsula,” he alleged. “If you’ve been there you know you don’t want to go down that path.”
The U.S. has almost 28,500 troops in South Korea.