VANCOUVER (REUTERS) – The world needs to step up pressure on Pyongyang to force it to abandon its nuclear weapons programme and should not be fooled by a charm offensive in engaging South Korea, participants at a 20-nation meeting on North Korea said on Tuesday (Jan 16)..
VANCOUVER (REUTERS) – The world needs to step up pressure on Pyongyang to force it to abandon its nuclear weapons programme and should not be fooled by a charm offensive in engaging South Korea, participants at a 20-nation meeting on North Korea said on Tuesday (Jan 16).
„We must increase the costs of the regime’s behaviour to the point that North Korea must come to the table for credible negotiations,“ US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the one-day meeting he is co-hosting with Canada in Vancouver.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has refused to give up development of nuclear missiles capable of hitting the United States in spite of increasingly severe UN sanctions, raising fears of a new war on the Korean peninsula.
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono said the world should not be naive about North Korea’s „charm offensive“ in engaging in talks with South Korea ahead of next month’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
„It is not the time to ease pressure, or to reward North Korea,“ he said. „The fact that North Korea is engaging in dialogue could be interpreted as proof that the sanctions are working.“
Tillerson said North Korea must not be allowed „to drive a wedge“ through allied resolve or solidarity and reiterated Washington’s rejection of a Chinese-Russian proposal for the United States and South Korea to freeze military exercises in return for a freeze in North Korea’s weapons programmes.
US national security adviser H. R. McMaster held secret meetings in San Francisco over the weekend with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s top national security adviser and a senior South Korean official, a US official said.
The three discussed North-South talks last week and a shared commitment to keep up the US-led pressure campaign against Pyongyang, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
