The US State Department said Wednesday its policy on North Korea \u201chas not changed,\u201d following remarks by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that Washington is ready to talk without prior conditions.<\/p>\n
Tillerson\u2019s comments, made Tuesday, were interpreted by some experts as a softening of the US position.<\/p>\n
The Secretary of State stated the need for a \u201cperiod of calm\u201d in Pyongyang\u2019s nuclear and ballistic tests before negotiations could begin.<\/p>\n
However, he also said talks could begin \u201cwithout preconditions,\u201d including without confirmation that Kim Jong- Un\u2019s regime will abandon its nuclear program.<\/p>\n
Tillerson had said in August that \u201ca condition of those talks is there is no future where North Korea holds nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe secretary was not creating a new policy, our policy remains exactly the same as it was,\u201d State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe remain open to dialogue when North Korea is willing to conduct a credible dialogue on the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,\u201d she said, adding \u201cclearly the time is not right now\u201d and that the State Department is \u201con the same page\u201d as the White House on the issue.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump\u2019s national security advisor, HR McMaster, also said denuclearization is \u201cthe only viable objective in North Korea.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTalks with North Korea won\u2019t be an end in themselves,\u201d he added during a conference organised by the Jamestown Foundation research institute in Washington.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, he interpreted Tillerson\u2019s offer of discussions \u201cwithout preconditions\u201d as meaning that the US is \u201cnot going to relieve any pressure on North Korea, or cave in to any demands for pay offs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tillerson yesterday told the Atlantic Council policy forum that North Korea is welcome to talk about anything at a first meeting \u2014 even the weather.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s just meet and let\u2019s talk about the weather if you want and talk about whether it\u2019s going to be a square table or a roundtable if that\u2019s what you\u2019re excited about,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US State Department said Wednesday its policy on North Korea \u201chas not changed,\u201d following remarks by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that Washington is ready to talk without prior conditions. Tillerson\u2019s comments, made Tuesday, were interpreted by some experts as a softening of the US position. The Secretary of State stated the need for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13468,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13467"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13469,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13467\/revisions\/13469"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}