WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump declared on Wednesday that there was “no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea,” a dubious claim following his summit with leader Kim Jong Un that produced no guarantees on how and when Pyongyang would disarm.

“Just landed — a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office,” he tweeted. “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!”

Trump’s claim that North Korea no longer poses a nuclear threat is questionable considering Pyongyang’s significant weapons arsenal.

Independent experts say the North could have enough fissile material for anywhere between about a dozen and 60 nuclear bombs. Last year it tested long-range missiles that could reach the U.S. mainland, although it remains unclear if it has mastered the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead that could re-enter the atmosphere and hit its target.

And while Trump and Kim have signed a joint statement that contained a repeat of past promises to work toward a denuclearized Korean Peninsula, the details haven’t been nailed down. Trump has said strong verification would be included in a final agreement, with the particulars sorted out by his team with the North Koreans next week.

“Before taking office people were assuming that we were going to War with North Korea,” Trump tweeted Wednesday. “President (Barack) Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem. No longer — sleep well tonight!”

Trump’s chest-thumping tweets seemed reminiscent of the “Mission Accomplished” banner flown behind President George W. Bush in 2003 when he spoke aboard a Navy ship following the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The words came back to haunt the administration, as the war dragged on throughout Bush’s presidency.

When asked whether Trump was jumping the gun by declaring victory, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told reporters: “This president wants North Korea to completely denuclearize so obviously that has to be complete, verifiable and irreversible. That will take a while.”

Trump and Kim were returning to their respective strongholds following the talks — but to far different receptions.

In Pyongyang, North Korean state media heralded claims of a victorious meeting with the U.S. president; photos of him standing side-by-side with Trump on the world stage were splashed across newspapers. Trump, meanwhile, faced questions about whether he gave away too much in return for far too little when he bestowed a new legitimacy on Kim’s rule and agreed, at Pyongyang’s request, to end war games with Seoul that the allies had long portrayed as crucial to Asian safety.

There were worries, especially in Tokyo and Seoul, which have huge U.S. military presences, about Trump agreeing to halt U.S. military exercises with South Korea, which the North has long claimed were invasion preparations. That concession to Kim appeared to catch the Pentagon and officials in Seoul off guard, and some South Koreans were alarmed.

“The United States is our ally, so the joint military drills are still necessary to maintain our relationship with the U.S.,” said Lee Jae Sung, from Incheon. “I think they will be continued for a while.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived at Osan Air Base south of Seoul from Singapore early Wednesday evening. He met for nearly an hour at the air base with Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, before heading by motorcade to Seoul.

Pompeo will meet President Moon Jae-in on Thursday morning to discuss the summit. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono is also heading to Seoul and is due to meet with Pompeo and his South Korean counterpart. Pompeo, the former CIA director, then plans to fly to Beijing to update the Chinese government on the talks.

Moon has championed engagement with the North, and the agreement’s language on North Korea’s nuclear program was similar to what the leaders of North and South Korea came up with at their own summit in April. Trump and Kim referred back to the so-called Panmunjom Declaration, which contained a weak commitment to denuclearization but no specifics on how to achieve it.

The North suggested Wednesday that Trump had moved away from his demand for complete denuclearization before U.S. sanctions on the long-isolated country are removed.

The Singapore agreement does not detail plans for North Korea to demolish a missile engine testing site, a concession Trump said he’d won, or Trump’s promise to end military exercises in the South while negotiations between the U.S. and the North continue. Trump cast that decision as a cost-saving measure, but also called the exercises “inappropriate” while talks continue.

The U.S. has stationed combat troops in South Korea since the end of the Korean War in the 1950s and has used them in a variety of drills. The next scheduled major exercise, involving tens of thousands of troops, normally is held in August.

The Pentagon said Tuesday it was consulting with the White House and others, but was silent on whether the August exercise would proceed. Defense Secretary James Mattis’ chief spokeswoman, Dana W. White, told reporters he was “in full alignment” with Trump.

In Japan, the prospect of canceled U.S.-South Korean drills was met with concern.

“The U.S.-South Korea joint exercises and U.S. forces in South Korea play significant roles for the security in East Asia,” Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera told reporters Wednesday. He said he planned to continue sharing the view with Washington and Seoul.

Associated Press writers Eric Talmadge in Pyongyang, North Korea; Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, South Korea; Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo; and Josh Lederman in Singapore contributed to this report.</s>President Donald Trump committed Tuesday to provide security guarantees to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in exchange for complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

In a vague joint statement released at the end of their historic summit, Trump and DPRK Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed the Panmunjom Declaration signed in April to ensure denuclearization and committed to recovering and repatriating POW and MIA remains.

The concessions by both parties did not include more expansive measures for global community building.

Trump confirmed that international sanctions on Pyongyang would remain in place and, to avoid irking the nascent ally, Trump halted all joint military operations with South Korea “unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should.”

The U.S., in effect, gained a friend in North Korea by putting distance in another relationship. The strategy follows a week of isolating rhetoric that piqued U.S. allies at the G7 meeting.

Apart from diplomatic implications, critics lamented the lack of details guiding forward motion.

“We believe the remaining questions on timeline, verification and the end result of disarmament efforts will serve to increase Chinese influence on the process, thereby increasing China's leverage with the U.S. in trade negotiations,” Height Capital Markets analyst Clayton Allen said in a note.

Allen said the uncertainties increase the possibility that follow-on talks dissolve, drive greater tension and result in weaker U.S. leverage in Asian trade negotiations.

One expert said the groundwork laid for long-term peace and stability is meaningful.

“Six months ago we were talking about the real possibility of conflict and even war, now we have an extended period of diplomacy, and I think that in terms of regional stability will be good, and in terms of perceptions of regional risk for investors across East Asia, it’s good news,” Kevin Rudd, president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, said on CNBC.

No timetable or detailed plans have been formally announced, leading critics to tag the announced outcomes as unsubstantial.

The U.S. and DPRK confirmed they would enact the terms of the joint statement “fully and expeditiously” and hold additional relevant negotiations between U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a DPRK counterpart.

"Trump approaches some meetings as legitimate 'get it done' interactions, and some as softer personal sessions,” an insider told Axios. “This was about establishing supremacy, setting the tone in some way for a longer play."

Trump told reporters after the summit that the peace process “will involve having a lot of people in North Korea.”

The Market In 5 Minutes: G7 Fallout, North Korea Summit, Match Group And More</s>SINGAPORE (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday rocked a region and suggested the upending of decades of U.S. defense posture on the Korean Peninsula when he announced that he was stopping annual U.S.-South Korean military drills and wants to remove the 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in the South as a deterrent against North Korean attack.

The stunning, almost offhand comments, made during a news conference hours after his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, contradicted countless previous declarations by U.S. political and military officials over the years that the drills are routine, defensive and absolutely crucial.

Trump has now essentially adopted the standard North Korean line, calling the military exercises a "provocative" drain of money and announcing they would stop while he continues talks with Kim, whom he repeatedly praised as a solid negotiating partner.

His statement was quickly portrayed by critics as a major, unreciprocated concession to a country that only last year was threatening Seoul and Washington with nuclear war.

It also seemed to leave officials completely off guard in South Korea, where the presence of U.S. troops has long been described as necessary to maintaining peace on the peninsula.

Seoul's presidential office told The Associated Press that it was trying to parse Trump's comments. The South Korean military seemed similarly surprised.

"At this current point, there is a need to discern the exact meaning and intent of President Trump's comments," Seoul's Defense Ministry said, adding that there have been no discussions yet with Washington on modifying drills set for August.

U.S. forces in South Korea said it has "received no updated guidance on the execution or cessation of training exercises" and will continue to coordinate with South Korean partners and maintain the current posture until it receives an updated guidance from the Department of Defense or the Indo-Pacific Command.

Trump's comments will be questioned by many in South Korea and beyond, with some seeing in them an effort by North Korea to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington.

North Korea regularly calls the military exercises provocative preparations for a northward invasion, and many of the scariest standoffs in recent years on the Korean Peninsula have happened when the drills were being staged. Outside analysts believe the North objects to the drills because it must spend precious resources on its own war games and troop movements. North Korea also insists that the U.S. troop presence in the South, as well as its nuclear "umbrella" over allies Seoul and Tokyo, are part of America's "hostile" policy toward the North.

"I want to bring our soldiers back home," Trump said, although he added that it's "not part of the equation right now." Then he said: "We will be stopping the war games, which will save us a tremendous amount of money unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should. But we'll be saving a tremendous amount of money. Plus, I think it's very provocative."

The comments could fundamentally change the way the United States, whose alliance with Seoul was forged after a 1950 surprise attack by the North started the Korean War, operates in South Korea.

Trump's announcement that the U.S. would stop military exercises, his description of those drills as "provocative" and his suggestion that he wants to pull U.S. troops out at some point are "all things that Trump is putting on the table as concessions, all in exchange for some vague promises by the North Koreans," said Paul Haenle, a former China director at the White House National Security Council in the Barack Obama and George W. Bush administrations.

Annual military drills between Washington and Seoul have been a major source of contention between the Koreas for years, and analysts have wondered whether their continuation would hurt the inter-Korean detente that, since an outreach by Kim in January, has replaced last year's insults and threats of war. North Korea last month broke off a high-level meeting with Seoul over South Korea's participation in a two-week military exercise with the United States.

North Korea's state media, referring to the drills, recently demanded that Washington "stop the acts of threatening its dialogue partner by force."

Since the 1970s, the United States and South Korea have held a major summertime exercise called Ulchi Freedom Guardian that involves tens of thousands of troops. There are also annual springtime drills. Drills called Team Spirit, one of the largest annual military maneuvers in the world at the time, were held from 1976 until 1993, when, after North Korea agreed to dismantle its existing nuclear facilities, the exercises were canceled and have not been held since.

Moon Seong Mook, a former South Korean military official, said Trump's comments on the drills confirmed what many in South Korea had feared all along — that North Korea would attempt to drive a wedge between Washington and Seoul and gain substantial concessions from an unconventional U.S. president who thinks much less of the traditional alliance than his predecessors.

"The core of the U.S.-South Korea alliance is the U.S. troops stationed in South Korea and the joint U.S.-South Korea military drills, but the American military presence in South Korea wouldn't mean much if the militaries don't practice through joint drills," said Moon, now a senior analyst for the Seoul-based Korea Research Institute for National Strategy. "I am concerned that the summit between Trump and Kim will prove to be a setback in the global efforts to denuclearize North Korea and also introduce instability in the alliance between Seoul and Washington."

Associated Press writers Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul and Gillian Wong in Beijing contributed to this report.

Foster Klug is AP's bureau chief in South Korea and has covered the Koreas since 2005. Follow him at www.twitter.com/apklug

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</s>SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that North Korea no longer posed a nuclear threat and his top diplomat offered a hopeful timeline for “major disarmament,” despite skepticism at home that Pyongyang will abandon its nuclear weapons following this week’s summit.

Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un issued a joint statement after their historic meeting in Singapore on Tuesday that reaffirmed the North’s commitment to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” and gave U.S. guarantees of security to North Korea.

Democratic critics in the United States said the agreement was short on detail and the Republican president had made too many concessions to Kim, whose country is under U.N. sanctions for its nuclear and weapons programs and is widely condemned for human rights abuses.

Just over half of Americans approve of how Trump has handled North Korea, but only a quarter think the summit will lead to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Wednesday.

North Korea’s state media hailed the summit as a success, including highlighting Trump’s surprise announcement after the meeting that the United States would stop military exercises with South Korea, which the North has long sought.

Despite the lack of detail in the summit agreement, Trump stressed at a news conference afterward that he trusted Kim to follow through. He returned to Washington early on Wednesday and hailed the meeting, the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader, as a major win for American security.

“Everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office,” Trump tweeted. “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea. Meeting with Kim Jong Un was an interesting and very positive experience. North Korea has great potential for the future!”

Kim also returned home, the North’s official news agency said.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is charged by Trump with leading follow-on negotiations, said the United States hoped to achieve “major disarmament” by North Korea within the next 2-1/2 years.

Democratic lawmakers pointed out that North Korea had often made similar statements in the past about “denuclearization,” all the while developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles that could be capable of striking the United States.

“One trip and it’s ‘mission accomplished,’ Mr. President? North Korea still has all its nuclear missiles, and we only got a vague promise of future denuclearization from a regime that can’t be trusted,” said Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.

“North Korea is a real and present threat. So is a dangerously naive president,” he wrote on Twitter.

Senator Chris Van Hollen, also a Democrat, said of Trump’s tweet about North Korea no longer presenting a threat: “This is truly delusional.”

Trump also downplayed concerns about Kim’s human rights record. In an interview with Fox News broadcast on Wednesday, Trump said: “A lot of other people (have) done some really bad things. I could go through a lot of nations where a lot of bad things were done.”

The summit statement provided no details on when Pyongyang would give up a nuclear weapons program or how the dismantling might be verified. Skeptics of how much the meeting achieved pointed to the North Korean leadership’s long-held view that nuclear weapons are a bulwark against what it fears are U.S. plans to overthrow it and unite the Korean Peninsula.

Speaking to reporters on a trip to Seoul, where he went to brief South Korean officials, Pompeo was asked if he would like to accomplish major nuclear disarmament within Trump’s current term, which ends in January 2021. He replied: “Oh yes, most definitively.

“Absolutely ... you used the term major, major disarmament, something like that? We’re hopeful that we can achieve that in the 2-1/2 years.”

The United States has long insisted on complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization by North Korea, but in the summit statement, North Korea committed only to the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” phrasing it has used in the past.

North Korea has often rejected unilateral nuclear disarmament, instead referring to the denuclearization of the peninsula. That has always been interpreted in part as a call for the United States to remove its “nuclear umbrella” protecting South Korea and Japan.

Pompeo bristled at a question about why the words “verifiable” and “irreversible” were not in the summit joint statement, in the context of denuclearization.

“It’s in the statement. You’re just wrong about that. ... Because complete encompasses verifiable and irreversible. I suppose you could argue semantics, but let me assure you that it’s in the document,” Pompeo said.

Pressed on how the agreement would be verified, he said:

“Of course it will. ... I find that question insulting and ridiculous and frankly ludicrous.”

Despite Trump’s assertion about the North Korean nuclear threat being over, a senior U.S. official responsible for studying the North Korean military said the U.S. intelligence assessment of the nuclear and other military threat posed by North Korea to U.S. and allied forces and bases in Asia and the northwest Pacific remained unchanged.

But the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which assesses threats to U.S. national security, declined to comment on the president’s assertion. It also declined to reaffirm a February 2018 assessment in which it said: “North Korea will be among the most volatile and confrontational WMD (weapons of mass destruction) threats to the United States over the next year.”

In a post-summit announcement that appeared unexpected even to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Trump said on Tuesday the United States would stop military exercises with South Korea while North Korea negotiated on denuclearization.

“We save a fortune by not doing war games, as long as we are negotiating in good faith - which both sides are!” he later wrote on Twitter.

U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham called the cost reasoning “ridiculous,” telling CNN: “It’s not a burden onto the American taxpayer to have a forward deployed force in South Korea.”

“It brings stability. It’s a warning to China that you can’t just take over the whole region. So I reject that analysis that it costs too much, but I do accept the proposition, let’s stand down (on military exercises) and see if we can find a better way here.”

The United States maintains about 28,500 soldiers in South Korea, which remains in a technical state of war with the North after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty.

There was some confusion over precisely what military exercises Trump had promised to halt.

The U.S.-South Korean exercise calendar hits a high point every year with the Foal Eagle and Max Thunder drills, which both wrapped up last month. Another major exercise is due in August.</s>US military drills with South Korea and Washington's troop presence there are "vital" for regional security, Japan said Wednesday, raising concerns after US President Donald Trump said the drills would be halted.

"The drills and the US military stationed in South Korea play a vital role in East Asia's security," Japan's defence minister Itsunori Onodera said when asked about Trump's surprise announcement.

"I hope to share this recognition between Japan and the US, or among Japan, US and South Korea," he told reporters.

Trump stunned observers Tuesday, after meeting North Korea's leader, by saying the regular joint US-South Korea military exercises would be halted as Washington fleshes out a deal with Pyongyang.

"We will be stopping the war games, which will save us a tremendous amount of money, unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should," Trump said.

"Plus, I think it's very provocative," he added, saying further that "at some point" he wanted to withdraw US troops from the South, without suggesting a timeline.

Security experts warn that a reduction in US military presence in East Asia would alter the balance of power in the region as China's engages in a rapid military build-up.

Onodera said Japan's policy remained unchanged after the Trump-Kim summit.

"There is no change in our policy of putting pressure" on North Korea, he said, adding that Japan wanted concrete action from the North over its nuclear and missile ambitions, as well as on the issue of Japanese abducted by Pyongyang decades ago.</s>SINGAPORE (AP) — When South Korea's president shuttled between North Korea and the United States to broker their first-ever summit, he faced both praise and criticism over whether he was a peace-making mediator or was helping North Korea find ways to weaken U.S.-led economic sanctions.

A day after President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un held their summit in Singapore, is it clearer whether Moon Jae-in played a positive or negative role? A quick answer: Probably not.

Assessments of Moon's diplomacy have become more divisive and complex, with Trump criticized in both South Korea and the U.S. for the concessions he made to North Korea, while others believe the summit will successfully prolong the current mood of detente.

Meeting for about five hours, Trump and Kim exchanged an historic handshake, took a short stroll together, patted each other's backs and signed a summit agreement. Trump promised to provide security guarantees to the North and suspend joint military drills with the South as long as negotiations with the North continue in "good faith." Kim, in return, agreed to work toward a vague "complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."

Those moves were unthinkable even several months ago, when the two unpredictable leaders threatened to nuke each other and traded a series of harsh personal insults.

Moon issued a statement after the summit calling it a "huge step forward" toward peace that "helped break down the last remaining Cold War legacy on Earth."

He acknowledged that many difficulties are likely to lie ahead but vowed to work together with the U.S., North Korea and others to bring lasting peace to the Korean Peninsula.

"We will never go back to the past again and never give up on this bold journey. History is a record of people who take action and rise to a challenge," he said.

But conservatives in South Korea slammed the summit, saying it failed to curb North Korea's nuclear ambitions. They said both Trump and Moon should be blamed for not specifying steps and deadlines for North Korea's nuclear disarmament, allowing it time to perfect its weapons program.

"High expectations were met by low results," said Nam Sung-wook, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Korea University. "Moon, and then Trump, were quick to bite on North Korea's invitation for talks. When Trump realized there wasn't going to be anything substantial in return, it was impossible for him to back out because he had already gone too far."

U.S. officials had worked hard to get North Korea to agree to "complete, verifiable and irreversible" disarmament, and said they would not offer any major concessions until it took meaningful steps. Despite those efforts, Trump announced after the summit that he had agreed to suspend U.S. military drills with South Korea, something North Korea has long demanded.

On Wednesday, North Korean state media said Trump had also agreed to the North's desire for a step-by-step disarmament process with corresponding U.S. concessions at each step, rather than immediate disarmament as the U.S. had initially sought.

Trump's agreement to suspend the military drills apparently came without prior consultation with South Korea, baffling many who believe the U.S.-South Korea alliance, forged in blood during the 1950-53 Korean War, should remain strong throughout the push for a negotiated end to the nuclear tensions.

"Why did South Korea and the U.S. form an alliance and stage military drills before the nuclear crisis flared? It's because North Korea has been belligerent," said Kim Taewoo, former president of the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. He said cancellation of the drills "is really a bad idea ... and (Trump) betrayed our people."

Asked to respond to Trump's decision, Moon spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom said the allies must consider a "variety of ways to further facilitate dialogue" during the nuclear negotiations. He said South Korea is still trying to figure out the exact meaning and intent of Trump's comments.

Since taking office in May last year, Moon, a son of North Korean refugees, has sought to take the lead in diplomatic efforts to end the North Korean nuclear standoff, which had been dominated by world powers including the U.S. and China.

Provocative nuclear and missile tests by North Korea last year initially gave Moon little diplomatic room to maneuver. But he kept trying to reach out to North Korea, and eventually found a role as a mediator after Kim offered in January to send a delegation to the South Korean Winter Olympics.

After successful cooperation at the Olympics, Moon sent special envoys to North Korea who later traveled to Washington with Kim's proposal for a summit with Trump. Moon held talks with Kim in April at which Kim agreed to work toward "complete denuclearization." He met Kim again in May when Trump said he was withdrawing from the planned summit with Kim — a decision Trump quickly reversed.

Experts now expect a temporary peace to continue since North Korea has probably won what it wanted from Tuesday's summit and Trump is unlikely to back down from summit deals that he wants to portray as a diplomatic triumph.

Analyst Hong Min at Seoul's Korea Institute for National Unification said critics of the joint statement signed by Trump and Kim are missing a bigger point.

He said it's meaningful in itself that the leaders of the United States and North Korea met, talked and signed an agreement that will carry more weight and significance than any pact previously made between the wartime foes. The agreement's aspirational language on denuclearization was a "strategic decision" to reduce pressure on both sides and keep the process going, Hong said.

Trump and Kim agreed that their countries will quickly engage in follow-up talks led by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a "relevant high-level" North Korean official.

Bong Youngshik, a professor at Seoul's Yonsei University, said it's too early to predict how Trump's cancellation of the military drills will play out in future nuclear negotiations. He said North Korea is likely to consider Trump's decision a temporary measure while it remains in negotiations with Washington.

Moon may not face any immediate serious political repercussions at home since North Korea will likely take gradual steps toward disarmament to prevent others from thinking it reneged on its pledge. But if Trump seeks re-election in 2020, his government is likely to apply more pressure on North Korea to make substantial progress in denuclearization, which could bring the nuclear issue to another critical point, said Shin Beomchul of Seoul's Asan Institute for Policy Studies.</s>SINGAPORE (AP) — The Latest on the summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump in Singapore (all times local):

North Korea says U.S. President Donald Trump expressed his intention during a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to halt joint military drills between the U.S. and South Korea.

The North's official Korean Central News Agency said Wednesday that Trump also expressed his intention to offer security guarantees to North Korea and lift sanctions "over a period of good-will dialogue" between the two countries.

KCNA quoted Kim as saying that the North can take unspecified "additional good-will measures of next stage commensurate with them" if the United States takes genuine measures to build trust.

KCNA quotes Kim as saying it's "urgent to make a bold decision on halting irritating and hostile military actions against each other."

Annual military drills between the United States and South Korea have been a major source of tension on the Korean Peninsula. The North has called them an invasion rehearsal and responded with its own weapons tests.

North Korea says President Donald Trump has agreed on a step-by-step denuclearization process by North Korea in return for reciprocal concessions from the United States during a summit with its leader Kim Jong Un.

The Korean Central News Agency said Wednesday the two leaders "shared recognition to the effect that it is important to abide by the principle of step-by-step and simultaneous action in achieving peace, stability and denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."

The reported agreement, if confirmed by the United States, could be considered as a concession by Trump because U.S. officials had called for the North to take swift disarmament measures before getting major outside concessions and benefits.

Some experts say a step-by-step denuclearization process is a ploy to win concessions while delaying disarmament.

Trump and Kim met in Singapore on Tuesday for their countries' first-ever summit talks.

Former Vice President Joe Biden says he is troubled by the outcome of the summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Biden says in a statement released Tuesday that Trump has given North Korea multiple "wins up front without getting anything in return." He says those include an easing of pressure on Pyongyang, the suspension of U.S.-South Korean military exercises and the summit itself, which gave Kim legitimacy.

Biden says that in return, Trump got only "vague promises" to begin negotiations on North Korea's nuclear program, reducing U.S. leverage.

Biden is accusing Trump of taking "an inexcusable and irresponsible approach" to the summit by not fully preparing for it, and he is urging the administration to focus on denuclearizing the Korean peninsula.

The parents of Otto Warmbier, the American college student who died after being released from a North Korean prison last year, are thanking President Donald Trump for his kind words about their son.

Fred and Cindy Warmbier said in a statement Tuesday after Trump met with North Korea's Kim Jong Un that they appreciated the president's comments. They said they were hopeful that something positive could come from the summit.

Earlier in Singapore, Trump said that Otto Warmbier was a "very special person" and that his death had galvanized the administration's determination to deal with North Korea. Trump said Otto Warmbier had not died in vain.

Warmbier was a student at University of Virginia who was arrested by North Korean authorities in January 2016 for stealing a propaganda poster and sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor. After suffering still unexplained brain injuries, he was released on June 13, 2017 and died six days later.

Israel's prime minister is congratulating President Donald Trump for an "historic" summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Benjamin Netanyahu (neh-ten-YAH'-hoo) said in a statement Tuesday that the meeting was an important step toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

He also praised Trump's "tough" stance on Iran and its nuclear program, which he said was already affecting Iran's economy. He said: "President Trump's policies are an important tiding for Israel, the region and the entire world."

Netanyahu has been one of Trump's most vocal supporters on the global stage. He vehemently opposed the Iran nuclear deal signed between world powers and Iran, from which the U.S. withdrew last month.

President Donald Trump says North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "loves his people, not that I'm surprised by that, but he loves his people."

Trump made his comments during an interview with VOA that followed his historic meeting with Kim, looking beyond Kim's international reputation for having one of the worst human rights records in the world.

Political prisoners in the country number in the tens of thousands and systematic torture and assassinations, including of his own brother, are not unheard of.

In the past, Trump has spoken of the "horror" of life in North Korea and met in February with eight defectors from that country at the White House.

The Vienna-based body set up to oversee a treaty banning nuclear testing worldwide is welcoming the "positive and direct dialogue" between the U.S. and North Korean leaders and offering to support verification efforts.

Lassina Zerbo is the executive secretary of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization. He says he hopes that Tuesday's summit "will provide a basis for progress toward verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."

Zerbo says his group would, if invited, "support any verification activities for the permanent closure of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site."

The organization was created more than 20 years ago to monitor the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, but that deal has not yet gone into force because key nations have yet to ratify it.

The U.N. says Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is calling the summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "an important milestone" in advancing peace and "complete and verifiable denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula."

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric says the secretary-general "urges all concerned parties to seize this momentous opportunity."

Dujarric said Guterres wrote to both leaders before the summit and reiterates Tuesday that "the road ahead requires cooperation, compromise and a common cause."

Guterres told reporters Monday that the International Atomic Energy Agency and other parts of the U.N. system "stand ready to support this process in any way, including verification if requested by the key parties."

Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer says President Donald Trump already has given up American leverage over North Korea.

The New York Democrat said Tuesday during a speech on the Senate floor that Trump's meeting with Kim Jong Un might well have been "a reality show summit."

Schumer spoke as Trump celebrated the first meeting in history between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader. But Trump also faced mounting questions about whether he got too little and gave away too much — including an agreement to halt U.S. military exercises with treaty ally South Korea.

He said if North Korea does not denuclearize, the "meeting alone will be a victory for North Korea and a defeat for the U.S."

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell says President Donald Trump's meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong Un produced "a major step" toward peace.

But the Kentucky Republican said that if the North does not follow through with complete denuclearization, "We and our allies must be prepared to restore the policy of maximum pressure."

McConnell, speaking Tuesday in Washington, was referring to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's statement that the U.S. goal remains the "complete verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean peninsula." That language is not included in the agreement.

McConnell added that "the next steps in negotiation will test whether we can get to a verifiable deal which enhances the security of North East Asia, our allies and of course, the United States."</s>WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to suspend major U.S. military exercises in South Korea could weaken allied defences, depending on the length and scope of the hiatus. But the potential for diplomatic damage seems even greater.

The United States, South Korea and Japan were making a public display of solidarity Thursday over the outcome of Trump's summit with North Korea's Kim Jong Un. But analysts and former officials with experience in U.S.-Asia policy were shaken by Trump's failure to inform the Asian allies -- or even the Pentagon -- before mothballing the military manoeuvrs.

"Those exercises are critically important because they are deterrence," said Chuck Hagel, a former defence secretary in the Obama administration. He welcomed Trump's willingness to talk to Kim but worried that the president has underestimated the complications he has introduced for the Pentagon by suspending the military drills.

"You don't just shut them on and off like a water faucet," he said.

The exercises in question go well beyond routine training, which apparently is unaffected by Trump's decision. Large-scale exercises are done to ensure that evolving tactics, procedures and plans can be carried out smoothly and that U.S. and South Korean forces are in sync. They also are a means of showing allied solidarity, which is part of the psychology of deterring enemy attack.

The U.S. has stationed combat troops in South Korea since the Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice and no peace treaty. The more than 28,000 U.S. forces serve as a military tripwire against North Korean aggression. The next major exercise with South Korea is known as Ulchi Freedom Guardian; last year's version was held for 11 days in August and involved about 17,500 U.S. troops.

The U.S. has insisted these kinds of drills are defensive measures to demonstrate U.S. and South Korean preparedness to respond promptly to any aggression by the North. But when Trump announced his decision to halt them, he characterized them as "provocative" and as "war games."

"Those are literally the North Korean and Chinese talking points," said Christine Wormuth, the Pentagon's top policy official from 2014 to 2016. She noted that the North and China have long complained that the military exercises, including those involving U.S. strategic bombers, are a rehearsal for invasion.

In further explaining his reasons for suspending major exercises, Trump said they "cost a fortune," though even the Pentagon, which foots the bill for U.S. participation in all such manoeuvrs, has been unable to say what they cost.

Defence Secretary Jim Mattis' office on Wednesday sent out a request to military commands for cost estimates for the main military exercises held on and around the Korean Peninsula, according to officials who spoke about the request on condition of anonymity to discuss internal communications. In the past, some estimates for smaller exercises have been about $2 million, while some larger ones have cost $15 million or more -- all relatively minor expenses for a department with a budget now exceeding $700 billion.

Michael Green, who was Asia director on the National Security Council staff during the George W. Bush administration, said the likely damage from suspending drills is multiplied by Trump's failure to inform South Korean and Japanese officials in advance and his focus on cost-savings from the suspension. This was then compounded, in Green's view, by Trump's dubious assertion on Twitter that North Korea no longer poses a nuclear threat.

"The No. 1 problem with this, geopolitically, is that it suggests to our allies that we are just incompetent, that we don't recognize the threat," Green said. He worries that it undermines confidence in the American commitment to the defence of South Korea and Japan.

Harry Harris, the retired Navy admiral and former commander of U.S. forces throughout the Pacific, said Thursday he believes the North's nuclear weapons still pose a threat, but he endorsed Trump's decision to suspend U.S. military exercises.

"We should give major exercises a pause to see if Kim Jong Un is serious about his part of the negotiations," Harris said at a Senate hearing to consider his nomination to be U.S. ambassador in Seoul. Harris said the suspension of drills reflects a "new landscape" in Korea and provides "breathing space" for progress in negotiating North Korea's nuclear disarmament.

Without mentioning that South Korea and Japan were not consulted before Trump suspended drills, Harris said such decisions should not be taken unilaterally.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, meanwhile, briefed his South Korean, Japanese and Chinese counterparts on the Singapore summit. At a news conference in Seoul, Pompeo said "staying closely aligned with our allies ... will be critical" to success with North Korean denuclearization, but he had nothing to say about the suspension of military drills.

The White House has said that the manoeuvrs were suspended "in a show of good faith," for as long as productive negotiations with the North continue, and that "regular readiness training and training exchanges" will continue. The Pentagon, however, has remained silent on what Trump meant and hasn't confirmed it will cancel or postpone the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise.

When Ulchi Freedom Guardian was announced last year, the U.S. military called it a "computer-simulated defensive exercise designed to enhance readiness." Also participating were troops from nations that contributed forces during the 1950-53 Korean War, including Australia, Britain, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, New Zealand and the Netherlands.

In Wormuth's view, Trump's stated concern about the cost of such exercises, combined with his talk of eventually bringing all U.S. troops home from South Korea, is likely to create doubt in Seoul and Tokyo about American steadfastness.

"This is going to further erode people's confidence in our staying power," she said.

Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.</s>President Trump's pledge Tuesday to suspend joint U.S. military exercises with South Korea will be a welcome concession to North Korea, which has frequently complained that the drills are a preparation for war.

But halting the annual exercises would not represent a major sacrifice for the United States, which has suspended the military drills before in an effort to lessen tensions on the peninsula. They can be restarted quickly.

Most recently the Pentagon agreed to delay planned military exercises during the Olympics, which were held in South Korea, after the North agreed to participate. The exercises were held after the Winter Games ended.

The drills were also suspended between 1994 and 1996 in an attempt to improve conditions during diplomatic talks with North Korea. The diplomatic efforts ultimately failed and the exercises resumed.

Trump said he would halt the exercises during a news conference after his summit with Kim. He termed the exercises "provocative.'

"This would be a substantial concession to North Korea's security concerns," said Alison Evans, an analyst at IHS Markit, a firm that tracks security issues.

The military exercises, which often involve ships, aircraft and thousands of troops have been conducted for decades on the Korean Peninsula.

The Pentagon has said they are critical to maintain the readiness of U.S. and South Korean forces, which could be called on to defend against an attack from North Korea, which has an active duty force of one million troops and thousands of artillery pieces and rocket launchers aimed at the South.

In a news conference after the summit Trump suggested suspending them would be a cost-saving measure.

"We will be stopping the war games, which will save us a tremendous amount of money, unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should," Trump said.

It's not clear how South Korea and other U.S. allies in the region will react to the suspension of exercises. South Korean President Moon Jae-in has been pushing the United States and North Korea to reconcile their differences and may be sympathetic to the overture.

But many South Korean officials and other regional leaders may see the move as a lessening of military commitment to the region. The United States has more than 30,000 troops based in South Korea.

"South Koreans and the Japanese were taken aback by the president's statement," said Victor Cha, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Trump may also have raised concerns when he said he would like the American troops in South Korea to "come home," but there were no plans to do so now.

"That's not part of the equation right now," Trump said. "At some point, I hope it will be, but not right now."

The Pentagon in a statement said it "welcomes the positive news coming out of the summit and fully supports the ongoing, diplomatically-led efforts" with North Korea.

"Our alliances remain ironclad, and ensure peace and stability in the region," the statement said.</s>North Korean leader Kim Jong Un hasn’t given up a single nuclear weapon, but that didn’t stop President Donald Trump from reassuring Americans on Twitter that they should “sleep well” because the nuclear threat fromPyongyang is over.

That public strategy is leading some analysts to believe Trump might be willing to live with a nuclear armed North Korea just as the U.S. has learned to live with other nuclear nations, like Pakistan and India.

Despite tough U.S. talk before the summit about “complete” and “verifiable” denuclearization, the vaguely worded 1 1/2-page document Trump and Kim signed doesn’t include that language and essentially represents “tacit approval” of North Korea’s nuclear program, said Jeffery Lewis, director of the at the Middlebury Institute for Studies in Monterey, California.

“I don’t think it would be the end of the world, because it’s the world we already live in,” he said. “My worry is that the president keeps promising that Kim will give up his weapons. If he suddenly wakes up one day and realizes what’s really going on, he could just explode, and then we’re in real trouble.”

Even the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based policy research group normally supportive of Trump’s foreign policy, signaled its reservations.

“It is difficult to evaluate whether Trump and Kim’s joint statement is a small step toward” verifiable denuclearization or is, instead, “a sign that the Trump administration will accept other outcomes.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo angrily dismissed those concerns, saying that the language used in the agreement encompassed U.S. demands, even though they weren’t spelled out, and predicting that significant progress on denuclearization will be made by 2021.

“I suppose we could argue semantics, but let me assure you it’s in the document,” Pompeo told reporters Wednesday in Seoul.

The mercurial Trump could also quickly shift his approach if he determines sufficient progress isn’t being made. Less than a year before their historic summit, Trump was threatening “fire and fury” on North Korea and publicly deriding Kim as “Little Rocket Man.”

Few Concessions

 

 At their historic summit, Kim made few concessions beyond agreeing to “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” -- a term his regime and the U.S. can’t agree on a definition for. The agreement provided no timetable for giving up as many as 60 nuclear bombs and a range of missiles, including some that he says can strike the American homeland.

Pompeo said he’ll be hammering out details of the accord in the coming weeks with North Korean counterparts. But appears to be betting on the model of “build it first” and then letting a long process of fruitless talks drag on later. The country has already staved off a quarter-century of efforts to get it to halt nuclear development, and the agreement it signed in Singapore is weaker than previous commitments, which were quickly breached.

Of the world’s eight known nuclear powers beyond North Korea, three -- India, Pakistan and Israel -- emerged outside a formal arms control framework. India, in particular, faced years of U.S. sanctions for its nuclear program before Washington accepted that continued opposition was useless and that it needed to do more to court the world’s biggest democracy. Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons received tacit support from Washington, which saw it as providing a guarantee of safety in a volatile region.

In the joint statement, North Korea only agreed to “work toward’’ denuclearization. Those two words -- and the lack of any mention of “complete, verifiable, irreversible’’ disarmament -- could signal to world leaders that Kim will not be forced to abandon his nuclear program, said Adam Mount, a senior fellow with the Federation of American Scientists in Washington.

“ will read this as a concession that its nuclear and missile advancements purchased weaker language on denuclearization,’’ Mount said. “North Korea’s commitment ‘to work toward’ disarmament is analogous to the language that binds the five accepted nuclear weapons states. will use this language to portray itself as a nuclear power, entitled to neglect its disarmament commitments just like the other nuclear powers.’’

A key Trump ally, Republican Senator Tom Cotton, appeared to acknowledge the success of North Korea’s model in an interview after the summit concluded.

Without his nuclear arsenal, Kim wouldn’t have been even able to sit down and negotiate with Trump, according to Cotton, a member of the armed service committee who backed the president’s efforts in Singapore.

“Countries like Iran and Cuba and other two-bit rogue regimes don’t have nuclear weapons, yet,” Cotton told Hugh Hewitt. “They can’t threaten the United States in that way.”

Iran urged North Korea to be vigilant while it weighs U.S. offers, citing Trump’s decision last month to quit a landmark nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions. Tehran’s government is still weighing whether it will stick by the accord or leave and potentially renounce the nuclear non-proliferation treaty -- the accord North Korea ditched in 2003 before detonating its first bomb three years later.

North Korea’s neighbors have grown accustomed to living with a nuclear North Korea. Officials in China and Russia have called for sanctions relief to be considered, while South Korea has been aggressively pursuing a rapprochement with North Korea.

Trump, who said this week that North Korea’s nuclear program is “very substantial,’’ has also softened his rhetoric -- suspending military exercises and scaling back his demands for what North Korea must do to receive relief from sanctions. During a press conference following Tuesday’s summit, Trump lamented about how long it might take to achieve complete denuclearization.

“You’re talking about a very complex subject. It’s not just like, ‘Oh, gee. Let’s get rid of the nukes’’’ Trump said Tuesday. “It takes a period of time.’’

If Kim’s nuclear program becomes globally accepted as a menace to maintain rather than eliminate, the precedent could be dangerous for non-proliferation, said Lewis.

“I’m not saying it’s a good thing to accept North Korea this way,’’ he said. “If we do that we set a terrible example for non-proliferation. Saddam gave up his nuclear program and died; Qaddafi gave up his program and died; Kim didn’t give up, built a bunch of nuclear weapons and not only stays alive but gets rewarded. That is not a good message to be sending out.’’
South Korea says that it will halt military drills with the United States to help with Korean denuclearization talks.