Team Trump on Tuesday minimized revelations that US spy agencies believed that North Korea was building new missiles in the same research facility that manufactured earlier ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US.
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told Fox News that the news was no big deal because the US and Kim Jong Un’s rogue regime were still negotiating.
“We’ll see what happens,” Conway said, borrowing one of President Trump’s stock responses.
“Things don’t change overnight,” she added, arguing that the news “suggests that this is a process.”
Her comments come after a report this week in the Washington Post that US intelligence officials had discovered fresh evidence that the North was building new ICBMs.
After Trump met with Kim in a high-profile summit in June, the president declared in a pair of tweets that North Korea no longer posed a threat to the US.
“Just landed — a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong-un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!” read one.
“Before taking office people were assuming that we were going to War with North Korea. President Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem. No longer — sleep well tonight!” the second tweet said.
Despite the new evidence suggesting otherwise, Conway seemed dismissive of the news, which indicated that North Korea had resumed its nuclear program and had not taken concrete steps to denuclearize, as Trump insisted they would.
“You are talking about 68 years of sustained war and conflict in Korea,” she said. “And we’re ahead of the game in this way.”
She mentioned that Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to Hawaii on Wednesday to accept the remains of US soldiers and Marines killed in the Korean War showed Trump’s “leadership and intervention.”
Conway also slammed ex-President Barack Obama for never meeting with Kim.
“So at least [Trump] is trying to approach it in a very different way,” Conway said.
“Secretary of State [Mike] Pompeo continues to be our main point person on these negotiations.”
Democrats were markedly less sanguine.
“Your regular reminder that under @realDonaldTrump, the US gave up military readiness exercises but North Korea has NOT Eliminated any nukes, Eliminated any missiles, Eliminated any chem weapons. Now it appears #NorthKorea is building NEW missiles,” California Rep. Ted Lieu, a retired Air Force officer who sits on the House Foreign Relations Committee, posted on Twitter.
US intelligence officials said new evidence, including satellite photos taken in recent weeks, suggested that work was under way on at least one and possibly two liquid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles at a research facility in Sanumdong on the outskirts of Pyongyang.
Trump said last week that his administration’s plan to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons was “going very well.”
But Pompeo said there was “an awful long way to go” before North Korea could be viewed as no longer a nuclear threat.
Meanwhile, North and South Korea discussed reducing tension but didn’t announce any detailed agreements after military talks on Tuesday.
The meeting, the second since June and held in the border village of Panmunjom, was a follow-up to an inter-Korean summit in April at which leaders of the two Koreas agreed to defuse tension and halt “all hostile acts.”
Generals from the two Koreas exchanged views on a possible cut in firearms and personnel to “demilitarize” the heavily fortified demilitarized zone, as well as joint excavation within the area of the remains of soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War.
They also discussed ways to calm the skirmish-prone West Sea by ceasing firing exercises and withdrawing artillery along the shore, according to South Korea’s defense ministry.
The Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the US-led United Nations forces, including South Korea, technically still at war with the North.
Pyongyang sees an official end to war as crucial to lowering tension.
With Post wires