WASHINGTON (AP) – America and the world can “sleep well tonight,” President Donald Trump declared on Wednesday, boasting that his summit with Kim Jong Un had ended any nuclear threat from North Korea though the meeting produced no details on how or when weapons might be eliminated or even reduced.
While Trump claimed a historic breakthrough at the most significant diplomatic event of his presidency, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, was more measured. He said that Trump’s tweet was made “with eyes wide open” to the possibility diplomacy could falter, and that the U.S. wants North Korea to take “major” nuclear disarmament steps within the next two years – before the end of Trump’s first term in 2021.
And while North Korean state media had claimed that Trump and Kim agreed to “step-by-step” actions – an apparent euphemism for phased sanctions relief in exchange for phased denuclearization – Pompeo ruled that out. He insisted that Trump had been explicit about the sequencing from the start.
“We’re going to get denuclearization,” Pompeo said. “Only then will there be relief from the sanctions.”
Shortly after arriving in Seoul to brief U.S. treaty allies Japan and South Korea, Pompeo also cautioned that the U.S. would resume “war games” with close ally South Korea if the North stops negotiating in good faith.