N. Korea diverges from U.S. on accord
Trump team expects big steps to disarm within 2½ years
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday that the Trump administration hopes to complete “major disarmament” of North Korea within the next 2½ years, even as conflicting accounts of discussions between the two sides left unclear what had actually been agreed to.
A day after President Donald Trump’s landmark meeting with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, in Singapore, the two leaders and their governments sought to shape the understanding of their talks to their advantage. But the contours of the vague agreement remained unclear and open to divergent
interpretations.
North Korea’s state-controlled news media said Trump had agreed to a phased, “step by step” denuclearization process rather than the immediate dismantling of its nuclear capability, with the United States providing reciprocal benefits at each stage along the way. Trump has previously insisted he will not lift sanctions until North Korea has rid itself of its nuclear weapons.
The Trump administration, for its part, insisted the general wording of the joint statement signed by Trump and Kim committed North Korea to an intrusive inspection regime to confirm its “complete denuclearization.” The statement itself, however, did not explicitly use the words “verifiable” or “irreversible” that had been part of the mantra of U.S. officials leading up to the Singapore summit.
“Let me assure you that the ‘complete’ encompasses ‘verifiable’ in the minds of everyone concerned,” Pompeo told reporters in Seoul, where he flew to consult with South Korean officials. “One can’t completely denuclearize without validating, authenticating — you pick the word.”
The president himself did not dwell on the details as he landed back in Washington early Wednesday morning. Instead, he claimed a sweeping achievement even before any of the details have been worked out.
“Just landed — a long trip, but everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office,” he wrote on Twitter. “There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.”
“Before taking office people were assuming that we were going to War with North Korea,” he added. “President Obama said that North Korea was our biggest and most dangerous problem. No longer — sleep well tonight!”
His claim that there was no longer a nuclear threat even though North Korea has not given up any of its weapons or dismantled any of its 141 known nuclear facilities other than blowing up a test site. Trump’s assertion drew derision from critics who accused him of getting way ahead of what could be a long, difficult negotiation to translate the gauzy aspiration of Singapore into a workable plan.
“What planet is the president on?” asked Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader. “Saying it doesn’t make it so. North Korea still has nuclear weapons. It still has ICBMs. It still has the United States in danger. Somehow President Trump thinks when he says something it becomes reality. If it were only that easy, only that simple.”
Lawmakers and allies alike were left trying to discern what exactly Trump agreed to and how the followup negotiations would proceed. Pompeo planned to brief South Korean officials who were caught off guard to learn the president had agreed to suspend joint military exercises in a significant concession to North Korea.
“The critical question is what comes next?” said Kelsey Davenport, nonproliferation policy director at the Washington-based Arms Control Association. “The true test of success is whether the follow-on negotiations can close the gap between the United States and North Korea on the definition of denuclearization and lay out specific, verifiable steps that Pyongyang will take to reduce the threat posed by its nuclear weapons.”
Only after the signing ceremony did it emerge that more commitments had apparently been made than were listed in the joint statement. In a post-summit news conference Tuesday, Trump announced that the United States would end joint military exercises with its South Korean allies, which Pyongyang has long denounced as rehearsals for an invasion of the North. The news appeared to catch both the South Korean government and the United States military off guard.
On Wednesday, President Moon Jae-in in Seoul appeared to endorse Trump’s decision.
“While North Korea and the United States are engaged in sincere talks on denuclearization and relations-building, we recognize the need to find various options to smooth such dialogue,” said a spokesman, Kim Eui-kyeom.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency reported that Trump had agreed to “lift sanctions” once bilateral relations improve. Trump had said Tuesday that the sanctions would stay in place until North Korea dismantled enough of its nuclear program to make it difficult to reverse course. Trump said the denuclearization process would begin “very soon” and happen “very quickly.”