WASHINGTON — The United States has a plan that would lead to the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs in a year, President Trump’s national security adviser said Sunday, although US intelligence reported signs that Pyongyang doesn’t intend to fully give up its arsenal.
John Bolton said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be discussing that plan with North Korea in the near future. Bolton added that it would be to the North’s advantage to cooperate to see sanctions lifted quickly and aid from South Korea and Japan start to flow.
Bolton’s remarks on CBS’s ‘‘Face the Nation’’ appeared to be the first time the Trump administration had publicly suggested a timetable for North Korea to fulfill the commitment leader Kim Jong Un made at a summit with Trump last month for the ‘‘complete denuclearization’’ of the Korean Peninsula.
Despite Trump’s rosy post-summit declaration that the North no longer poses a nuclear threat, Washington and Pyongyang have yet to negotiate the terms under which it would relinquish the weapons that it developed over decades to deter the United States.
Doubts over North Korea’s intentions have deepened amid reports that it is continuing to produce fissile material for weapons.
The Washington Post on Saturday cited unnamed US intelligence officials as concluding that North Korea does not intend to fully surrender its nuclear stockpile.
Evidence collected since the June 12 summit in Singapore points to preparations to deceive the United States about the number of nuclear warheads in North Korea’s arsenal as well as the existence of undisclosed facilities used to make fissile material for nuclear bombs, according to the report.
It said the findings support a new, previously undisclosed Defense Intelligence Agency estimate that North Korea is unlikely to denuclearize.
Some aspects of the new intelligence material were reported Friday by NBC News.
Another US official said the Post’s report was accurate and that the assessment reflected the consistent view across federal agencies for the past several weeks. The official was not authorized to comment publicly on the matter and requested anonymity.
Bolton on Sunday declined to comment on intelligence matters.
He said the administration was well aware of North Korea’s track record over the decades in dragging out negotiations with the United States to continue weapons development.
‘‘We have developed a program. I'm sure that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be discussing this with the North Koreans in the near future about really how to dismantle all of their WMD and ballistic missile programs in a year,’’ Bolton said.
‘‘If they have the strategic decision already made to do that, and they’re cooperative, we can move very quickly,’’ he added.
He said the one-year program the United States is proposing would cover all the North’s chemical and biological weapons, nuclear programs, and ballistic missiles.
Even if North Korea is willing to cooperate, dismantling its secretive weapons of mass destruction programs, believed to encompass dozens of sites, will be tough.
Stanford University academics, including nuclear physicist Siegfried Hecker, a leading expert on the North’s nuclear program, have proposed a 10-year road map for that task; others say it could take less time.
Pompeo has already visited Pyongyang twice since April to meet with Kim — the first time when he was still director of the CIA — and there are discussions about a possible third trip to North Korea late next week but such a visit has not yet been confirmed.
Trump reiterated in an interview broadcast Sunday that he thinks Kim is serious about denuclearization.
‘‘I made a deal with him. I shook hands with him. I really believe he means it,’’ the president said on Fox News’s ‘‘Sunday Morning Futures.’’
Trump also defended his decision to suspend ‘‘war games’’ with close ally South Korea, saying it would save a lot of money.
