Just 10 days after his historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, US President Donald Trump yesterday described North Korea's nuclear arsenal as an "extraordinary threat" to justify maintaining sanctions imposed on Pyongyang.
"There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea," he said, however, on his return to Washington after the Singapore summit on June 12.
But the presidential statement sent to Congress yesterday had a completely different tone in its explanation of why Washington would maintain the severe economic sanctions it has imposed on Pyongyang.
"The presence and threat of the spread of fissile material for military purposes on the Korean Peninsula and North Korea's actions and policies continue to pose an extremely great threat to US national security, foreign policy and the economy," Trump wrote yesterday.
In the official statement, the US president was justifying the maintenance of sanctions against Pyongyang and the extension of another year of "national emergency" declared in 2008.
The Trump-Kim summit in Singapore ended with North Korea pledging for a "complete denuclearization", the details of which were postponed to subsequent negotiations. Ten days later no significant progress had been made.