N. Korea keeps Tillerson hanging
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s surprising diplomatic offer of unconditional talks with North Korea hinges on two big X factors: Does the North even want talks, and is President Donald Trump fully behind his top diplomat?
North Korea has yet to respond, and the White House distanced itself from Tillerson’s overture, which came two weeks after North Korea tested a missile that could potentially carry a nuclear warhead to the U.S. Eastern Seaboard.
Tillerson, who will address a U.N. Security Council meeting on North Korea on Friday, has carried the torch for engagement, and as fears of confrontation have risen, has progressively eased the threshold under which he says the U.S. could hold direct discussions with the reclusive nation.
“We are ready to talk anytime North Korea would like to talk. And we are ready to have the first meeting without preconditions,” Tillerson said at the Atlantic Council think tank, adding that the North would need to pause its weapons testing. It has conducted more than 20 ballistic missile launches and one nuclear test explosion this year. He called it “unrealistic” to expect it to enter talks ready to relinquish a WMD program it invested so much in developing, although that remained the ultimate goal.
China, which has urged dialogue, and U.S. ally South Korea, which fears disruption to the Winter Olympics it hosts in February, both welcomed Tillerson’s proposal.
The White House sounded less supportive. Two hours after Tillerson’s speech, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: “The president’s views on North Korea have not changed. North Korea is acting in an unsafe way not only toward Japan, China and South Korea, but the entire world.”
Without White House support, Tillerson’s call for unconditional talks would fall flat, said Mark Fitzpatrick at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “A skeptic might say that at least he wants to show the U.S. is trying diplomacy, so as to make any future military action more justifiable,” Fitzpatrick said.