The US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said that it is ‘ready to talk any time’ with North Korea without any ‘precondition’.
Yet Tillerson insisted on a ‘period of quiet’ without nuclear and missile tests if North Korea wants to talk with the US.
Tillerson said at the Atlantic Council in Washington, “We’ve said from the diplomatic side, we’re ready to talk anytime North Korea would like to talk. We are ready to have the first meeting without precondition.
“Let’s just meet, and we can talk about the weather if you want. Talk about whether it’s going to be a square table or a round table, if that’s what you are excited about. But can we at least sit down and see each other face to face, and then we can begin to lay out a map, a road map of what we might be willing to work towards.”
This is a major alternation that the US made in its prior demands, in which it insisted that if North Korea should disarm before having any conversation.
The statement has spurred a lot of discussions pertaining to the fact that the US was so firm about North Korea’s disarmament and they altered their statement just after North Korea successfully tested its intercontinental ballistic missile, bringing the US under its range. Also, prior to Tillerson’s speech, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un swore to build more ‘more latest weapons and equipment’ to ‘bolster up the nuclear force in quality and quantity’.
After few hours of Tillerson’s statement, the US President Donald Trump made a completely opposite proclamation stating that the US ‘had not changed’ its views on North Korea.
The White House announced, “The president’s views on North Korea have not changed. North Korea is acting in an unsafe way… North Korea’s actions are not good for anyone and certainly not good for North Korea.”
After visiting Pyongyang last week, United Nations political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman made the following statement: “Time will tell what was the impact of our discussions, but I think we have left the door ajar and I fervently hope that the door to a negotiated solution will now be opened wide.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang China stated that his country wants to help to loosen the tension between the two countries and minimize the risk of war.