President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, said on Tuesday that the United States would look at ramping up sanctions on North Korea if Pyongyang did not scrap its nuclear weapons program.
Bolton told Fox Business Network that following the Hanoi summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Washington would see whether Pyongyang was committed to giving up its “nuclear weapons program and everything associated with it.”
“If they’re not willing to do it, then I think President Trump has been very clear ... they’re not going to get relief from the crushing economic sanctions that have been imposed on them and we’ll look at ramping those sanctions up in fact,” said Bolton, a hardliner who has advocated a tough approach to North Korea in the past.
In a related development, Reuters reports that North Korea has restored part of a rocket test site it began to dismantle after pledging to do so in a first summit with U.S. President Donald Trump last year, while Trump’s national security advisor warned that new sanctions could be introduced if Pyongyang did not scrap its nuclear weapons program.
