Washington on Tuesday denied that it viewed a possible North Korean freeze of its nuclear program as a solution to the issue of North Korea’s denuclearization.

Speaking during a regular press briefing, State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said that Washington’s end goal remained the DPRK’s complete and verifiable denuclearization.

“(A) freeze, you know, that would never be the resolution of a process,” Ortagus told reporters. “That would never be the end of a process.”

“That would (be) something that we would certainly hope to see at the beginning. But I don’t think that the administration has ever characterized a freeze as