A new CIA assessment has concluded North Korea does not intend to give up its nuclear weapons any time soon, NBC News reported Tuesday.
According to the news outlet, the finding conflicts with President Donald Trump's assertions that Pyongyang intends to abandon its stockpile in the future.
"Everybody knows they are not going to denuclearize," one unnamed intelligence official told NBC News, adding the report was circulated earlier this month — before Trump canceled the originally scheduled June 12 summit.
The meeting might yet take place, Trump has said.
NBC News reported the analysis suggests a more realistic immediate objective would be convincing Kim Jong Un to walk back recent progress on the country's nuclear weapons program.
News of the CIA report came as Stanford professor Siegfried Hecker, who once directed the federal government's Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico, argued the dismantling of the North Korean nuclear program would take as long as 15 years, The New York Times reported.
NBC News reported that in an odd twist, a list of potential concessions by North Korea in the CIA analysis is the possibility Kim would consider offering to open a Western hamburger franchise in Pyongyang as a show of goodwill.
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