Kim Jong Un using nuclear weapons as insurance policy to stay in power, Rubio says
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Kim Jong Un has been using the development of North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme as his “insurance policy” to stay in power, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, said. There was a serious need to lower the risk of “an inadvertent war” between North and South Korea since the breakdown of Pyongyang’s talks with Washington, the Florida senator said at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s nomination hearing.
Mr Rubio, 53, a foreign policy hawk and an outspoken critic of China, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba, is expected to comfortably win confirmation as the nation’s top diplomat as he enjoys bipartisan support. On Wednesday he addressed major international issues as he faced a a friendly hearing before a committee in which he has served for 14 years.
"I think there has to be an appetite for a very serious look at broader North Korean policies," he said, adding that America has to prevent a crisis without encouraging other nation states to pursue their own nuclear weapons programme. Mr Rubio, who was once a rival to the president-elect for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, acknowledged he was initially skeptical about Mr Trump’s engagement with Mr Kim which he said helped in calming the situation a bit.
"I’ll be frank. I was one of the people very skeptical about it, but (Trump) sort of reached out to Kim Jong Un, walked away from negotiations twice and ultimately did not reach something enduring. But here’s what he was able to achieve in that engagement," he said.
