File photo of US President Donald Trump meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore, June 12, 2018. Kevin Lim / The Straits Times / via Reuters
President Donald Trump said that if North Korea tests intercontinental ballistic missiles, the U.S. will "deal with it.”
"I handle them as they come along,” Trump Tuesday told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
North Korea had long suggested it would use the end-of-year holiday season to deliver a "Christmas gift” to the U.S. after demanding Washington make additional concessions as part of long-stalled nuclear talks between the two sides. Earlier this year, Kim Jong Un’s regime set a Dec. 31 deadline for a breakthrough that has long seemed elusive.
Trump suggested that Kim’s threat might be a "nice present” rather than surprising him on Christmas with another missile test, which would deliver another blow to his effort to broker a landmark nuclear pact with North Korea.
"Maybe it’s a nice present. Maybe it’s a present where he sends me a beautiful vase as opposed to a missile test, right? I may get a vase. I may get a nice present from him. You don’t know. You never know,” Trump told reporters.
North Korea has added a structure to a factory linked to the production of intercontinental ballistic missiles, NBC News reported, raising concerns the reclusive country will resume testing weapons that can reach the U.S.
The commercial satellite images from Planet Labs show a temporary structure added to the site that can accommodate the raising of a launcher arm for such long-range missiles, according to NBC. The news report cited an analysis by Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.
Trump has long touted his outreach to Pyongyang -- and his personal ties to Kim -- as one of his key foreign policy triumphs. Kim and Trump have met face-to-face three times -- a first for any sitting American president -- and the two regularly praise each other.
Whatever comes next, Trump may have lost some of the leverage he once gained from talking tough. In 2017, he threatened "fire and fury” and officials talked of a "bloody nose” strike against North Korea. But since then, Trump has shown a distaste for conflict, pulling troops from northeast Syria and calling off a strike against Iran after it shot down a U.S. drone.
