Trump said North Korea
was 'no longer a nuclear threat.' His spies disagree.
Over the weekend, separate reports citing U.S. officials seemed
to confirm what so many experts have long feared — that despite the
overtures and sunny proclamations made at the Singapore summit between
President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Pyongyang probably has
little interest in dismantling its nuclear program.
My colleagues Ellen Nakashima and Joby
Warrick reported that evidence gathered by U.S. intelligence officials
in the weeks since the June 12 summit led to the conclusion that North
Korea “does not intend to fully surrender its nuclear stockpile, and
instead is considering ways to conceal the number of weapons it has and
secret production facilities.” Their reporting was corroborated by an earlier NBC story published Friday.
The North Koreans may have stopped
missile and nuclear tests in recent months, but as one U.S. official briefed on the latest
intelligence told NBC, “there's no evidence that they are decreasing
stockpiles, or that they have stopped their production. There is absolutely
unequivocal evidence that they are trying to deceive the U.S.”
“Intelligence officials and many
North Korea experts have generally taken a more cautious view, noting that
leader Kim Jong Un’s vague commitment to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula
is a near-echo of earlier pledges from North Korean leaders over the past
two decades, even as they accelerated efforts to build nuclear weapons in
secret,” Nakashima and Warrick reported.
They added that, “North
Korean officials are exploring ways to deceive Washington about the number
of nuclear warheads, and missiles and the types and numbers of facilities
they have, believing that the United States is not aware of the full range
of their activities.” While American officials believe North Korea has
amassed some 65 warheads, it seems North Korea will declare far fewer.
My colleagues also
reported that the North Koreans have operated “a secret underground uranium
enrichment site known as Kangson,” which was first reported in May by The
Washington Post. It is believed to have twice the uranium enrichment
capacity of the lone enrichment facility acknowledged by Pyongyang.
On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal's Jonathan Cheng reported
that experts monitoring satellite imagery believe North Korea is also
expanding a key missile-manufacturing plant, which could produce ballistic
missiles capable of carrying nuclear payloads.
“The observed activity appears
inconsistent with a North Korean intent to abandon its nuclear weapons
programs,” Bruce Klingner, a former CIA analyst and North Korea expert at
the Heritage Foundation, told NBC. “There seems little reason to
continue expansion plans if the regime intended to dismantle them as would
be required under a denuclearization agreement.”
Trump administration
officials are also less bullish than the president was.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told a Senate briefing last week that Trump
only believed the North Korean threat had been “reduced,” not ended. According to some reports, Pompeo may
make another visit to North Korea this week for more talks.
Appearing on a number of Sunday
morning news shows, national security adviser John Bolton sought to dispel
concerns that the White House is being hoodwinked. There is “nobody
involved in this discussion with North Korea in the administration who is
overburdened by naivete,” he told Fox News.
“We know exactly what the risks are
— them using negotiations to drag out the length of time they have to
continue their nuclear, chemical, biological weapons programs and ballistic
missiles,” Bolton told CBS. “There’s not any starry-eyed feeling among the
group doing this. We’re well aware of what the North Koreans have done in
the past.”
North Korea's past behavior offered a cautionary tale for
the Trump administration ahead of the Singapore summit, with Pyongyang
having reneged on earlier airy promises regarding denuclearization. Trump
cast himself as the American president who, this time, wouldn't get played. Even
so, the White House extracted few genuine commitments from Pyongyang while
it granted Kim a moment of legitimacy on the world stage and canceled
planned military exercises with South Korea.
“North Korea has made
no new commitments to denuclearization, and in fact has backed away from
its previous commitments,” Abraham M. Denmark, Asia Program director of the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, told a House committee in
late June in testimony cited by my colleagues. “North Korea remains free to
manufacture more nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and other weapons of
mass destruction — even though it has unilaterally frozen testing of its
nuclear weapons and certain ballistic missiles. There is no deadline for
them to eliminate their illegal capabilities, or even freeze their
continued production.”
And
now, Trump's much-touted campaign of “maximum pressure” on North Korea
appears to have run its course. China, a key North
Korean interlocutor, is now edging toward a trade war with the Trump
administration. It's hard to envision Beijing squeezing Pyongyang any
further on Washington's behalf.
This, too, was
predictable. “Having apparently helped get North Korea to the table, it is
unlikely that China will ever again agree to a maximum pressure campaign,” arms control experts Vipin Narang and Ankit
Panda noted on the eve of the Singapore summit. Tightening sanctions
would only destabilize North Korea, and China fears a desperate and broken
North Korea on its border more than it fears a nuclear North Korea. Even if
sanctions by the United States and the United Nations Security Council
remain in place, without additional Chinese implementation, North Korea
will find itself enjoying considerable breathing space.”
In an interview with
Fox Business on Sunday, Trump himself revealed a hint of skepticism: “I
made a deal with him, I shook hands with him, I really believe he means
it,” Trump said, referring to his encounter with
Kim. “Now, is it possible? Have I been in deals, have you been in things
where people didn’t work out? It’s possible.”
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Protótipo
clean e divertido: o novo Shinkansen da Hello Kitty só vai funcionar entre as
estações Shin Osaka e Hakata. 
clique
para visualizar o video de apresentação dos vagões para a imprensa. 
Clique
para visualizar o comercial de lançamento. Clique
aqui para entrar no site oficial do Shinkansen da Hello Kitty. A página
contém a história deste projeto, descrição do design, como será a lojinha de
produtos Hello, Kitty e o time table de funcionamento, com o horário de
partida de chegada para cada estação !! O site está ainda somente em japonês
mas é fácil acompanhar os dados. 