Trump says N. Korea ‘no longer’ a nuclear threat

Matthew P. | Josh Lederman
WASHINGTON, US.- President Donald Trump stretched credulity at home and abroad Wednesday by declaring there is “no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea” after his summit with Kim Jong Un that reduced tensions but produced no details on how or when Pyongyang might disarm.

Tempering Trump’s very upbeat assessment, his top diplomat, Mike Pompeo, cautioned that the U.S. would resume “war games” 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 of what is sure to be a complex and contentious process have yet to be settled. That didn’t stop the president from talking up the outcome of what was the first meeting between a U.S. and North Korean leader in six decades of hostility. The Korean War ended in 1953 without a peace treaty, leaving the two sides in a technical state of war.