According to an (unnamed) United Nations Security Council diplomat who spoke with CNN this week, there is a new confidential report from the UN accusing North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un of hiding nukes and continuing to sell weapons while supposedly working towards a peace agreement with the South and the United States.
From PJ Media:
President Trump announced a second summit this month with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un the same day that news leaked of a confidential United Nations report detailing the regime hiding nukes and selling weapons.
A UN Security Council diplomat told CNN that the report, compiled by experts empaneled by UNSC resolutions and submitted to a UN sanctions committee, found “evidence of a consistent trend on the part of the DPRK to disperse its assembly, storage, and testing locations.”
North Korea “continues to defy Security Council resolutions through a massive increase in illegal ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum products and coal,” states a report summary, as “global banks and insurance companies continue to unwittingly facilitate payments and provide coverage for vessels in ever-larger, multi-million-dollar, illegal ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum products.”
Trump is scheduled to meet with Kim for a second time, with a summit planned for February 17th in Vietnam.
At the State of the Union, Trump said, “If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now in my opinion be in a major war with North Korea with potentially millions of people killed.”
This is probably a case of classic Trump hyperbole, but neither his fiercest critics (nor Kim’s sharpest skeptics) can deny that he has made more progress than any previous president. Will he bring home the bacon and actually get North Korea to denuclearize? It remains to be seen – certainly, it’s always worth being suspicious when it comes to the mad gent of the Hermit Kingdom.
That said, if Trump can wrest Kim away from his Chinese puppet-masters through a combination of carrot and stick, we could witness one of the most stunning diplomatic turnarounds in global history. Until then, take these reports with a grain of salt. There are a lot of people – in the UN and the media – who want to see Trump fail.
