Updated at 7:55 p.m. ETSecretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday the U.
S. would be willing to enter negotiations with North Korea without requiring that it agree beforehand to give up its nuclear weapons program. The willingness to engage in talks without that understanding is a significant change in the U.
S. approach."It's not realistic to say we are only going to talk if you advance to the table alert to give up your program," Tillerson said in an address to the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank. "They have too much invested in it, and [President Trump] is very realistic approximately that as well."Later the president's press secretary Sarah Sanders released a statement saying,"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. North Korea's actions are not generous for anyone and certainly not generous for North Korea."Tillerson said the U.
S. is alert to talk whenever North Korea is. "We are alert to have the first assembly without precondition. Let's just meet. We can talk approximately the weather if you want. We can talk approximately whether it's going to be a square table if that's what you are excited approximately," Tillerson said."It's really approximately how do you begin the process of engagement. Because we are dealing with a North Korean leader that no one has ever engaged with. He's clearly not like his father, and " said Tillerson,"And we don't know what it will be like to engage with him." It will also be tough to talk, Tillerson says, and if North Korea continues to fire off missiles or test nuclear devices. The idea of talks approximately talks is something Suzanne Dimaggio supports. She's a senior fellow at a think tank called New America and has been portion of so-called track two diplomacy with North Korea. She says the Trump administration has been sending mixed signals with the president once tweeting that Tillerson is wasting his time."Clearly there's a need for this adminsitration to speak with one voice and stop this contradictory signalling," she says. "It is tall time to wander from a dithering approach and have a genuine strategy and empower our diplomats to carry that strategy out." Tillerson plans to wander later this week to the United Nations for a tall-level Security Council assembly on North Korea. A top U.
N. diplomat and former state department official, Jeffrey Feltman, and is just back from Pyongyang,and the U.
N. says he's calling for open channels to reduce the risks of conflict. Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
Source: thetakeaway.org