"There is nobody in this administration starry-eyed about the prospects of North Korea actually denuclearizing. I think what is going on now is that the president is giving Kim Jong-un a master class and how to hold a door open for somebody, and if the North Koreans can’t figure out how to walk through it, even the president’s fiercest critics will not be able to say it’s because he didn’t open it wide enough," Bolton told Fox News.
On Saturday, the US delegation to an ASEAN summit in Singapore handed over to North Korean officials the reply from Trump to a recent letter by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said earlier that Trump had received a letter from the North Korean leader.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho shook hands and had a brief conversation during an official group photo shoot at the 25th ASEAN Regional Forum. However, there were no official talks between the two counterparts.
Trump and Kim held a historic summit in Singapore on June 12. The sides agreed, among other issues, to join their efforts to establish a lasting peace regime on the Korean Peninsula and work toward its complete denuclearization.
The US Mission to the UN Security Council said in a statement that the proposals to the North Korea Sanctions Committee are the same as actions taken earlier on Friday by the US Treasury Department, and are part of a coordinated effort by the US government, adding that the only way to achieve the complete and verifiable denuclearization of North Korea is by maintaining maximum pressure on Pyongyang through sanctions.
On July 30, the Washington Post reported, citing unnamed officials, that US agencies had seen signs that North Korea was developing at least one, possibly two, liquid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles at a research facility near Pyongyang.
