N. Korea 'months' from ability to nuke US: CIA chief

North Korea could be "months" away from perfecting the ability to strike the United States with a nuclear weapon, a top American intelligence official said Thursday.

The warning by Mike Pompeo, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, comes as North Korea has threatened to hit the continental US with a nuclear-tipped long-range missile.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo speaks during the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) National Security Summit in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 19, 2017. (AP-Yonhap)

"They are closer now than they were five years ago, and I expect they will be closer in five months than they are today, absent a global effort to push back against them," Pompeo said in a discussion hosted by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "It is the case that they are close enough now in their capabilities that from a US policy perspective, we ought to behave as if we are on the cusp of them achieving that objective."

Pompeo acknowledged that the timeline may be off due to the limits of gleaning intelligence from a reclusive nation like North Korea.

"But when you're now talking about months," he said, "our capacity to understand that at a detailed level is in some sense irrelevant."

He added, "Whether it happens on Tuesday or a month from Tuesday, we are at a time where the president has concluded that we need a global effort to ensure that (North Korean leader) Kim Jong-un doesn't have that capacity."

Tensions reached new levels this year as North Korea fired two intercontinental ballistic missiles in July and conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test in September.

US President Donald Trump has threatened to "totally destroy" North Korea in the event that the US is forced to defend itself or its allies. He has also engaged in a war of words with Kim, stoking fears of an armed clash on the Korean Peninsula. (Yonhap)

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