“Kim is in the driver seat — he has many nuclear weapons and he knows where all of them are. The last time International Atomic Energy Agency inspection teams were allowed inside North Korea, nearly a decade ago, they could not travel outside the heavily-protected Yongbyon nuclear site. That, Mr. Samore notes, is “something North Korea has never agreed to.”Mr. Kim’s opening offer is to suspend missile and nuclear testing while talks are underway. That would keep things from getting worse and is fairly easy to verify, if a North Korean missile is launched or underground test conducted. But a freeze, as Mr. Tillerson noted in Seoul a year ago, would merely enshrine a status quo that Mr. Trump has viewed as intolerable.

Source: New York Times March 09, 2018 14:18 UTC