Key events
We’re going to wrap up our live coverage for the day.
As
Donald Trump
continues to fly home from his summit in Singapore with Kim Jong-un, political allies of the president are struggling a bit to get on the same page in describing what Trump agreed to.
Trump has ordered the suspension of US military exercises with South Korea, in a surprise concession to Kim.
In return, Kim signed a joint statement committing to denuclearisation, but it was a vaguely worded commitment that the regime has made several times before over the past three decades.
Later, Republican senator Cory Gardner said Vice-President Mike Pence had briefed senators that Trump had agreed to halt “war games” on the Korean peninsula but not “readiness training and exchanges”.
Here’s some of our latest coverage:
Senator Gardner now offers an interpretation by which his account of what vice president Pence said and Pence’s account can both be true:
Contradictory messaging on fate of military exercises
A Republican senator has said that vice president Mike Pence told Republican senators that military exercises “will continue in South Korea”.
After his meeting with Kim, Trump
announced the suspension
of US military exercises with South Korea, declaring that the joint military exercises, involving planes flying long distances, were too expensive.
“We will be saving a tremendous amount of money. Plus, it is very provocative,” Trump said.
But Pence sent senators the opposite message, according to Gardner:
Pence’s press secretary has subsequently called senator Gardner’s summary of Pence’s message “false”:
A CNN source in the Republican meeting says Pence’s answer on the war games question was not clear:
Meanwhile a Pentagon statement sidesteps the whole question:
About four years ago, and a year before he announced his presidential candidacy, Trump tweeted:
Here’s an exchange between Trump and former Fox News journalist Greta van Susteren that is difficult to follow:
The national Republican party, through its official Twitter account, compares Trump’s meeting with Kim to Reagan’s confrontation with Gorbachev:
Iran warns North Korea not to trust Trump ? report
Reuters reports that Iran has warned the North Korean leader,
Kim Jong-un
, against trusting Trump, saying he could cancel their denuclearisation agreement within hours:
Tehran cited its own experience in offering the advice to Kim a month after Washington withdrew from a similar deal with Iran.
Trump and Kim pledged at a meeting in Singapore on Tuesday to work towards complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula while Washington committed to provide security guarantees for its old enemy.
“We don’t know what type of person the North Korean leader is negotiating with. It is not clear that he would not cancel the agreement before returning home,” Iranian government spokesman Mohammad Bagher Nobakht was quoted as saying by IRNA new agency.
Nobakht questioned Trump’s credibility. “This man does not represent the American people, and they will surely distance themselves from him at the next elections,” he said.
Warmbier family: 'hopefully something positive'
Here is a statement from the parents of Otto Warmbier, the exchange student who
died
days after being released from North Korea detention in June 2017:
Pentagon 'was not surprised' by halt to military drills
The Pentagon insists defense secretary Mattis was not surprised by Trump’s signing an agreement to halt joint military exercises with South Korea, CNN reports:
A midnight errand for the governor of Guam: