North Korea claims Trump offered to halt drills

North Korea now says U.S. President Donald Trump expressed his intention during a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to halt joint military drills between the U.S. and South Korea.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said Wednesday that Trump also expressed his intention to offer security guarantees to North Korea and lift sanctions “over a period of good-will dialogue” between the two countries.

KCNA quoted Kim as saying that the North can take unspecified “additional good-will measures of next stage commensurate with them” if the United States takes genuine measures to build trust.

KCNA quotes Kim as saying it’s “urgent to make a bold decision on halting irritating and hostile military actions against each other.”

Annual military drills between the United States and South Korea have been a major source of tension on the Korean Peninsula. The North has called them an invasion rehearsal and responded with its own weapons tests.

President Trump himself called the exercises, “provocative.”

Wisconsin 3rd district Republican congressional candidate Steve Toft, a retired Army colonel, said he’s not too concerned about the ceesation of the exercises.

“The South Koreans are our allies, that’s not going to change, Toft said.  “That interoperability with their military that’s not going to change.  You know, we’ll look for other opportunities to train with the South Koreans but it might not be exactly what we’ve experienced up until now.”