NEW YORK — America’s top intelligence official expressed deep scepticism Tuesday (Oct 25) about the prospect of persuading North Korea to renounce nuclear weapons, saying it was “probably a lost cause”.

In a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations covering a range of international crises, the official, Mr James R Clapper Jr, the director of national intelligence, also said he was worried about instability in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul once Iraqi forces recapture it from the Islamic State, which he predicted would take “a long time”.

And Mr Clapper said that if the United States imposed a no-fly zone or safe zone in parts of Syria where Russian and US warplanes are flying, he “wouldn’t put it past” the Russians to shoot down an American aircraft if they felt their forces were threatened.

Many of Mr Clapper’s remarks, in a question-and-answer forum with television host Charlie Rose, were reiterations of what he and his associates have publicly said before. But his assessment of the situation on the Korean Peninsula appeared to diverge from a long-standing US policy: Seeking North Korea’s return to the so-called six-party talks, suspended for years, which are aimed at verifiably ridding the country of nuclear weapons.

But tensions in the region have been rising. Disregarding international sanctions, North Korea has repeatedly tested nuclear bombs underground, as well as missiles that could theoretically carry warheads to the United States.

Over China’s objections, the United States intends to install a sophisticated anti-missile system in South Korea to deter the perceived North Korean threat.

“I think the notion of getting the North Koreans to denuclearise is probably a lost cause,” Mr Clapper said Tuesday in response to a question about whether negotiations with North Korea’s leaders could lead to a suspension of its nuclear and missile activities.

“They are not going to do that,” he said. “That is their ticket to survival.”

Asked later about Mr Clapper’s remarks, the State Department spokesman, Mr John Kirby, said at a regular news briefing in Washington that he had not seen them, but that the United States’ position on North Korea was unchanged.

“We want to see a return to the six-party talk process, and that means we need to see the North show a willingness and an ability to return to that process, which they haven’t done yet,” Mr Kirby said.

“We continue — our policy objective is to seek, to obtain a verifiable denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula,” he added. “That is the policy.” NEW YORK TIMES