US tells North Korea it must start shipping nuclear weapons and long range missiles out of the country within a couple months before sanctions can be lifted
North and South Korea have spoken of their commitment to the goal of denuclearization of the peninsula at a summit last month
Pyongyang announced it will destroy its only known nuclear test site next week
Washington is seeking the ‘complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization’ of the North and stresses that verification will be key
Pyongyang has said it does not need nuclear weapons if the security of its regime is guaranteed
An unprecedented summit between Kim and Trump is scheduled to take place in Singapore on June 12
North Korea’s nuclear missile programmes is expected to dominate the agenda
DAILYMAIL.COM
14 May 2018
The United States is pressuring North Korea to ship its nuclear weapons overseas before sanctions are lifted.
North Korea meanwhile said over the weekend that all of the tunnels at the country’s northeastern nuclear test site will be destroyed by explosion in less than two weeks, ahead of Kim Jong-un’s summit with Donald Trump.
Observation and research facilities and ground-based guard units will also be removed, the North said. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo praised it as ‘one step along the way.’
John Bolton, the president’s national security adviser, described the types of steps that North Korea would need to take as part of a denuclearization process, including the potential involvement of a processing center in Tennessee.
‘The implementation of the decision means getting rid of all the nuclear weapons, dismantling them, taking them to Oak Ridge, Tennessee,’ Bolton said in an interview with ABC’s This Week. ‘It means getting rid of the uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing capabilities,’ adding the process would also need to address North Korea’s ballistic missiles.
‘I don’t think anybody believes you’re going to sign the complete ending of the nuclear program in one day. But we are also very much interested in operationalizing the commitment as quickly as possible,’ Bolton said.
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a nuclear research and storage facility that already holds key components from Libya’s nuclear weapons programme.
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