WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (all times local): 6:05 p…
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (all times local):
6:05 p.m.
President Donald Trump is stretching credulity at home and abroad by declaring there is “no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea” after his summit with Kim Jong Un.
But Trump’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, cautioned that the U. S. would resume military exercises with close ally South Korea if the North stops negotiating in good faith. The president had announced a halt in the drills after his meeting with Kim on Tuesday.
The summit in Singapore marked a sea change from last fall, when North Korea was conducting nuclear and missile tests, and Trump and Kim were trading threats and insults that stoked fears of war. Kim is now promising to work toward a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.
But the details have yet to be settled.
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11:30 a.m.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says he’s confident that U. S. talks with North Korea will resume “sometime in the next week.”
Pompeo says he doesn’t know the exact timing. Speaking in Seoul, he says he expects it to happen fairly quickly after he and the North Koreans return to their nations. Pompeo returns late Thursday to the U. S.
He says President Donald Trump is “in the lead” but that “I will be the person who takes the role of driving this process forward.”
He says much more work has been done by the U. S. and North Korean that couldn’t be encapsulated in the Trump-Kim Jong Un statement. So he says teams will now work to make more progress on those items.
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11:20 a.m.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the United States wants North Korea to take major nuclear disarmament steps within the next two years.
Pompeo is laying out an ambitious timeline for denuclearization following President Donald Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong Un. He says he won’t disclose specific timelines but that the administration is hopeful that “major, major disarmament” steps can occur before the end of Trump’s first term. The term ends in January 2021.
Pompeo is also urging skepticism after North Korean official media said Trump had agreed to a step-by-step approach to denuclearization. Pompeo isn’t being specific but says that “one should heavily discount some things that are written in other places.”
Pompeo spoke to reporters from Seoul, South Korea.
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11:15 a.m.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un understands that “there will be in-depth verification” of nuclear commitments in any deal with the U. S.
Pompeo is pushing back on criticism that the joint agreement signed by Kim and President Donald Trump includes no mention of verifying North Korean nuclear disarmament. Ahead of Trump’s summit with Kim, the U. S. had said disarmament must be “complete, verifiable and irreversible.”
But Pompeo tells reporters that it’s silly to focus on the lack of the word “verifiable.” He says that’s because the agreement does refer to “complete” denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Pompeo says that “in the minds of everyone concerned,” the word “complete” encompasses “verifiable.”
Pompeo says: “I am equally confident they understand that there will be in-depth verification.”
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11:10 a.m.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says joint U. S.-South Korea military exercises will resume if North Korea stops negotiating in good faith over its nuclear program.
Pompeo is in South Korea a day after President Donald Trump met with Kim Jong Un and announced the U. S. would freeze what he called “war games” with North Korea.
Pompeo says he was there when Trump talked about it with Kim. He says Trump “made very clear” that the condition for the freeze was that good-faith talks continue. He says if the U.
