North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is interested in meeting Donald Trump again only if the US comes to talks with the right attitude, state media said on Saturday, after the US president floated the idea.
Related: The art of the no deal: how Trump and Kim misread each other | Julian Borger
Continue reading...Failure puts UK’s reputation as responsible nuclear power at risk, auditors say
Storage of obsolete nuclear submarines has cost the UK taxpayer £500m because of “dismal” failings in the government’s nuclear decommissioning programme, Whitehall’s spending watchdog has found.
The Ministry of Defence has twice as many submarines in storage as it does in service and has not disposed of any of the 20 vessels decommissioned since 1980, the National Audit Office (NAO) said.
Continue reading...The US has begun building parts for a new ground-launched cruise missile in anticipation of the end of a cold war treaty that banned them, the Pentagon has confirmed.
The Trump administration declared on 1 February it was no longer bound by the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and would withdraw completely in August, pointing to the deployment of a new Russian missile which the US has complained for more than six years was a violation of the agreement.
Continue reading...US position hardens after Hanoi summit collapse, warning that any launches at missile sites would violate Kim Jong-un’s promise
The US is demanding North Korea destroys all its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons before receiving any sanctions relief, as positions harden on both sides in the aftermath of last week’s failed Hanoi summit.
The US clarified its demands after satellite images showed the North Koreans had completely rebuilt a space launch site they had partially dismantled after the first summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in June last year.
Continue reading...Documentary about last week’s Hanoi meeting offers benign portrayal of US president
It fell short of Donald Trump’s claim that he and Kim Jong-un had “fallen in love”, but a new North Korean documentary suggests the leaders’ relationship is strong enough to survive last week’s doomed summit in Vietnam.
In keeping with the rest of the regime’s post-talks coverage, the film makes no mention of the summit’s premature end, the countries’ irreconcilable differences over sanctions or their conflicting accounts of why the US president and the North Korean leader parted without an agreement.
Continue reading...US president claims it is too early to tell if Kim Jong-un is reconstructing Sohae facility
Donald Trump has said he will be “very disappointed” in the North Korean ruler, Kim Jong-un, if reports about a rocket launch site being rebuilt prove to be true.
Two US thinktanks and South Korea’s Yonhap news agency have reported that work was under way to restore part of the Sohae satellite launching station even as Trump met Kim in Hanoi last week for their second summit.
Continue reading...US national security adviser John Bolton warns US may ramp up sanctions if nuclear weapons program is not scrapped
North Korea has begun rebuilding a rocket launch site that had been partially dismantled as a goodwill gesture after the first summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un in June last year.
Satellite images show the reconstruction work was carried out shortly before their failed second summit in Hanoi last week, and their publication on Tuesday evening contributed to fears that the peace effort was in jeopardy.
Continue reading...US president says the timing of the Cohen hearing, while he was at the talks in Vietnam, was ‘a new low’ in politics
US president Donald Trump has blamed that the Democrats’ decision to interview his longtime fixer, lawyer Michael Cohen, on the same day as a meeting with Kim Jong-un for the fact that the North Korea summit ended with no deal.
“For the Democrats to interview in open hearings a convicted liar & fraudster, at the same time as the very important Nuclear Summit with North Korea, is perhaps a new low in American politics and may have contributed to the ‘walk.’” Trump said on Twitter, referring to his decision to walk away from what he previously said was a bad deal with Kim. “Never done when a president is overseas. Shame!”
Continue reading...We now know where North Korea and US stand – and the gaps that still need to be closed
The Hanoi summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un may have broken down abruptly and stalled negotiations for the time being, but it has opened a window into the talks that leaves some hope that a compromise can be reached.
Related: Vietnam summit: North Korea and US offer differing reasons for failure of talks
Continue reading...The summit between the US president, Donald Trump, and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, in the Vietnamese capital ended abruptly after both men failed to break the deadlock over US sanctions despite their much-vaunted personal relationship
Continue reading...North Korean despot and US president’s wildly different perceptions exposed in Hanoi
As with many disastrous second dates, the collapse of Donald Trump’s summit with Kim Jong-un was made inevitable by the misreading of each other’s intentions at their first encounter.
Since their initial meeting in Singapore last June, the US president had become fixated on what he saw as a close personal bond with the North Korean dictator half his age. He told his supporters: “We fell in love ... He wrote me beautiful letters.”
Continue reading...The US president, Donald Trump, says it is not a good time to strike a denuclearisation deal after talks with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, break down in Vietnam
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un answers – for what is believed to be the first time – a question from a foreign journalist. Asked if he was positive about reaching a deal with US president Donald Trump over nuclear disarmament, Kim said it was too early to tell whether a deal could be reached. However, he said he had a 'feeling that good results would come out' of the talks and that he was not pessimistic. Trump then asks a nearby photographer to make sure he sends his pictures to Kim
Continue reading...The leaders of the US and North Korea meet in Hanoi, Vietnam, at the start of the second nuclear summit. The pair, who looked pleased to see each other as they shook hands, were to hold a brief discussion on Wednesday before full meetings on Thursday
North Korean leader to meet US president on Wednesday for dinner after three-day overland trip
Kim Jong-un has arrived in Hanoi, after transferring from train to car for the final leg of his overland trip to Vietnam where the North Korean leader is scheduled to have a private dinner and meeting with Donald Trump on Wednesday.
Kim will meet the US president for a brief one-on-one conversation, followed by a social dinner, at which they will each be accompanied by two guests and interpreters, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said.
Continue reading...New hypersonic missiles could hit targets including Pentagon in under five minutes, it claims
Russian state television has broadcast a map of the US showing military facilities Moscow would target in the event of a nuclear strike, in a report that was unusual even by its own bellicose standards.
The targets included the Pentagon and the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland. A hypersonic missile Russia is developing would be able to hit them in less than five minutes, it said.
Continue reading...The idea that the US might sell state-of-the-art nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia, potentially enabling Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reckless regime to build nuclear weapons, sounds so far-fetched as to be almost grotesque.
After all the near-hysterical American and Israeli warnings about the risk of Iran, the Saudis’ arch-rival, acquiring the bomb, surely even Donald Trump would balk at such breathtaking – and dangerous – hypocrisy?
Continue reading...UK’s Molly Scott Cato among those held after action over stockpiling of US nuclear bombs
Three Green MEPs – including one from the UK – have been arrested after breaking into a Belgian military airbase to protest against its stockpiling of American B61 nuclear bombs.
The MEPs – Molly Scott Cato, Michèle Rivasi and Tilly Metz – unfurled a banner on a runway for F-16 fighter jets at the Kleine Brogel base in the east of the country calling for a nuclear-free Europe, before being taken into custody.
Continue reading...Top Trump officials pushed plan to share technology despite objections, according to House oversight committee report
Top White House officials pushed a plan to share nuclear technology with Saudi Arabia, despite objections from career national security staff, according to a new congressional report.
Related: A public holiday and gold-plated gun: Saudi crown prince feted on Asia tour
Continue reading...Former FBI chief says president believed Russian leader over US security agencies and ‘a crime may have been committed’ over Comey firing
A former FBI acting director has alleged Donald Trump dismissed advice from his own security agencies on the threat posed by North Korea’s missiles, saying “I don’t care. I believe Putin.”
Andrew McCabe made the claims in an interview with 60 Minutes, in which he discussed his tenure at the FBI after James Comey was fired by the president in 2017.
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