North Korea peace: Is Kim eyeing summit with Trump only to get sandwich joints in Pyongyang?

Just when things begin to look up in the Korean peace initiative, a fresh problem is encountered. According to a new assessment by the US intelligence agency Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), North Korea is not planning to give up its nuclear weapons soon, NBC News reported on Wednesday, May 30.

It cited three American officials as saying this and said that the new revelations stand in contrast to US President Donald Trump's recent opinion that North Korea is on its way to denuclearisation.

Trump has showed a renewed interest in holding the summit with North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un after scuttling the June 12 summit on May 24 but the CIA's latest analysis could case fresh doubts over the stated goal of the talks which is to see a denuclearised North Korea, the report added.

"Everybody knows they are not going to denuclearize," the NBC quoted an intelligence official who read the report, as saying. NBC said the report was circulated days before Trump scuttled the meeting with Kim.

The CIA analysis, on the other side, said that among his concessions, Kim might allow a western hamburger joint to open in Pyongyang as a goodwill gesture, the report added.

The analysis suggested that Kim is more interested in a peaceful gesture to Trump whose love of fast-food is well known. The latter, during his presidential campaign in 2016, had said that he wanted to talk with the North Korean leader on nukes over a burger.

"If the North Koreans don't agree in a joint statement that lays out denuclearization - that is, getting rid of their nuclear weapons, having them put under control by international elements - then I don't think we are going to go very far," Chris Hill, a former ambassador to South Korea, said Tuesday on MSNBC, the NBC report cited.