President Trump cannot force North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, White House national security adviser John Bolton said Monday, acknowledging that progress toward denuclearization has been slow.
“We’re still waiting for them. The possibility of another meeting between the two presidents obviously exists, but President Trump can’t make the North Koreans walk through the door he’s holding open,” Bolton said in remarks to the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group in Washington.
[Opinion: With North Korea, denuclearization isn’t possible through negotiation]
According to Bolton, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un previously agreed to destroy his weapons arsenal within a year when he met with his South Korean counterpart in late April.
“Moon Jae-in said to Kim Jong Un, ‘Why don’t we do it in one year?’ And Kim Jong Un said, ‘We’ll do it in one year,’ ” Bolton claimed.
But instead of rapid denuclearization, intelligence officials recently determined North Korea has continued to pursue nuclear weapons since Kim met with Trump in June and is now taking additional steps to conceal such activities.
The authoritarian regime still earned the president’s praise over the weekend, however, after Kim omitted his traditional display of intercontinental ballistic missiles from North Korea’s annual Foundation Day military parade.
“Thank you to Chairman Kim. We will both prove everyone wrong! There is nothing like good dialogue from two people that like each other! Much better than before I took office,” Trump tweeted Sunday.
The parade occurred just two weeks after Trump ordered Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to cancel his fourth trip to Pyongyang for nuclear negotiations with senior North Korean officials.
