U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton warned North Korea it must be willing to completely give up its nuclear weapons program or it may face even tougher sanctions.
“If they’re not willing to do it, President Trump has been very clear they’re not getting relief from the crushing economic sanctions that have been imposed on them,” Bolton told the Fox Business Network on Tuesday evening. “And we’ll look at ramping those sanctions up, in fact.”
The threat of more sanctions risks increasing tensions after Trump’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Vietnam last week ended without an agreement. Kim wanted Trump to ease most sanctions in return for dismantling a key nuclear production complex, while the U.S. wanted more action on hidden nuclear facilities, as well as warheads and intercontinental ballistic missiles that could deliver them to the American homeland.
When asked last week whether the U.S. would strengthen sanctions on North Korea, Trump said the sanctions were already strong. “I don’t want to talk about increasing sanctions. They’re strong,” he told a news conference in Hanoi hours after walking away from the summit. “They have a lot of great people in North Korea that have to live also. And that’s important to me.”
Any strengthening of sanctions would have to be coordinated with allies and rivals in the United Nations Security Council. Speaking outside the council on Wednesday, U.K. envoy Karen Pierce didn’t rule out the possibility of more crippling sanctions.
“We need to find a way to get Pyongyang to make those complete, verifiable and irreversible steps,” she said. “Obviously, engagement has not yet produced the results we want. So stronger sanctions would be an obvious, hypothetical option.”
