Deciding Easy if Kim Made Strategic Decision to Give Up His Nuclear Program: Bolton

Washington, Apr 29 (PTI) Deciding on a place and date for a meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong un should be fairly easy if the latter has taken a strategic decision to give up his entire nuclear weapons program, a top presidential advisor said Sunday.

In his first television interview in this capacity, which US National Security Advisor, John Bolton, assumed less than a month ago, he said the president sees the is a potential here for a historic agreement: a breakthrough that nobody could have imagined even a few months ago.

"We need to agree on a place and that remains an issue, but if, in fact, Kim has made a strategic decision to give up his entire nuclear weapons program, then I think deciding on the place and the date should be fairly easy," Bolton was quoted as saying by Fox News.

"That potential is there. But as he says repeatedly, the potential for no deal at all is also there. And we're not going to know until we actually have the meeting and see what Kim Jong-un is prepared to do. It certainly the case that the mere words aren't going to sway anybody," he said.

Trump, he said, is focused on doing everything he can to make this meeting a success.

"It's somewhat different than what he said before but I think he's saying, look, if you are going to come with a real strategic determination to give up nuclear weapons, we're going to have a very serious conversation,” he said.

Responding to a question on recent announcements by Kim, Bolton said it's a matter first finding out just how much there is to dismantle.

"I mean, it's not possible to go to this meeting with a set of screwdrivers and think we are going to take it apart beginning the day after the meeting. Therefore, the full, complete, total disclosure of everything related to their nuclear weapons program with full international verification, and I think following Libya, verification by American and other inspectors could be very important here," he added.

Bolton said that the maximum pressure campaign that the Trump administration has put on North Korea has, along with the political military pressure, has brought them to this point.

"Relieving that pressure isn't going to make negotiation easier, it could make it harder," he said.

The Trump administration, he says, wants to test North Korea in this first meeting for evidence that they have made that strategic decision, and have history to give us some assistance on it.

"At 1992, the joint North-South denuclearization agreement had North Korea pledging to give up any aspect of nuclear weapons and to give up uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing. Now, we got other things to talk about as well -- ballistic missiles, chemical and biological weapons, the American hostages, the Japanese abductees," he said.

But starting on the nuclear side with what North Korea agreed to more than a quarter of a century ago was a pretty good place to start, he said.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)