US official says Pyongyang has no chance to give up nukes

U.S. director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Tuesday expressed his thoughts North Korean nuke saying that since the North has no chance to denuclearize, the U.S. should lower its goal to freezing, rather than dismantlement of nuclear weapons, which has sparked controversy. Director of National Intelligence supervises various intelligence agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and is one of the main agencies responsible for intelligence on North Korea.

“I think the notion of getting the North Koreans to denuclearize is probably a lost cause...That (nuclear weapons) is their ticket to survival,” Clapper said in a seminar hosted by the Council of Foreign Relations in New York on the day. Mentioning his visit to North Korea to secure the release of two Americans detained in the North in 2014, Clapper said, “I got a good taste of that when I was there about how the world looks from their vantage,” adding, “And they are under siege and they are very paranoid.”

“So the notion of giving up their nuclear capability, whatever it is, is a non-starter with them. The best we could probably hope for is some sort of a cap (on the North’s nuclear capability),” the U.S. official said. “The North will not respond to even this (demand to freeze) without any condition simply because we are demanding. We need some sort of incentives.”

The remarks by Washington’s top intelligence official indicate that the U.S. has to focus on freezing North Korea’s nuclear weapons at the current level to prevent Pyongyang from further expanding its nuclear capabilities, instead of admitting the Stalinist country’s possession of nuclear weapons, which is not compatible with the Barack Obama administration’s North Korea policy. U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby told a regular media briefing on the day, “We want to continue to see a verifiable denuclearization of the peninsula,” adding that he had not seen Clapper's remarks.

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