Tillerson opens summit, vows to keep pressuring North Korea

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday that the United States would not stop joint military exercises with South Korea in exchange for North Korea freezing its nuclear weapons program, and he promised to keep squeezing Pyongyang economically and diplomatically until it abandons its quest.

“We must increase the costs of the regime’s behavior to the point that North Korea comes to the table for credible negotiations,” Tillerson said at the opening of a summit of 20 nations discussing ways to tighten economic sanctions against North Korea. “The object of negotiations, if and when we get there, is the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of North Korea.”

Tillerson appeared with a visual aid, a map showing air traffic across Asia on one day. Hundreds of yellow icons on the map represented planes, which the Federal Aviation Administration calculated held more than 150,000 seats within range of missiles.

“Based on its past recklessness,” Tillerson said, “we cannot expect North Korea to have any regard for what might get in the way of one of its missiles, or parts of a missile breaking apart.”

The Vancouver summit was called to explore ways to tighten sanctions against North Korea and discuss maritime indiction of ships carrying material to and from the country. U.N. sanctions allow countries to impound ships believed to be involved in helping North Korean smuggling. The United States wants to gather support for a blacklist of those ships so they can be barred entry to ports worldwide.

South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyungwha welcomed North Korea’s participation in the upcoming Olympics. “We hope the momentum for engagement will continue well beyond Pyeongchang,” she said.

Two key players were excluded from the summit: China and Russia, which supported the North and now sit on the U.N. Security Council. Both share a border with North Korea and are crucial to any push to enforce U.N. sanctions and cut off its trade.

Their exclusion limits the ability of the conference to achieve any broad agreements on additional sanctions, and it has rankled both countries.