U.S. calls on China to control N. Korea
Secretary of State calls recluse regime ‘most acute threat in the region’
The United States met Wednesday with Chinese diplomats to find ways China could exert pressure on North Korea amid heightened tensions with the isolated nation that holds three Americans.
The State Department meeting came two days after the death of Otto Warmbier, 22, a U.S. student from Cincinnati who was detained in North Korea in January 2016 and was returned to his parents last week in a coma.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said North Korea poses “the most acute threat in the region today.”
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who was part of the meeting, said President Trump is bewildered by North Korea’s provocative behavior and seeks China’s assistance to get Pyongyang to release other Americans.
China is North Korea’s chief sponsor and protector, and the North conducts about 90% of its trade through China,
Trump tweeted Tuesday that the United States “condemns the brutality of the North Korean regime as we mourn its latest victim.”
“China continues to work these issues,” Mattis said after the meeting. Trump’s outrage over Warmbier’s death “represents the American people’s view of North Korea right now.”
North Korea’s treatment of Warmbier “goes beyond any kind of understanding of law and order, of humanity, of responsibility toward any human being,” Mattis said. “What you’re seeing, I think, is the American people’s frustration with a regime that provokes and provokes and provokes and basically plays outside the rules.”
He said Wednesday’s meeting with Chinese officials was to have “an open and frank dialogue about what more can be done in areas of common interest. I would point out to you that China’s end state on the Korean Peninsula in terms of nuclear weapons is the same as ours.”
Tillerson said both the United States and China “call for complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. And we call on (North Korea) to halt its illegal nuclear weapons program and its ballistic missile test as stipulated in the U.N. Security Council resolutions.” The United States and China reaffirmed their commitment to implement United Nations resolutions prohibiting North Korea’s illicit weapons programs and impose sanctions for violations, Tillerson said.
The meeting included “a frank exchange of views” on the South China Sea, where China reclaimed islands and built military installations, he said. China asserted that international law allowing freedom of navigation through the area applies to commercial traffic but not to military vessels.
“Secretary Mattis and I were clear that the U.S. position remains unchanged,” Tillerson said. “We oppose changes to the status quo ... and we uphold the freedom of navigation and overflight.”
China committed to resolve its disputes peacefully and in accordance with international law, he said.