In perhaps the first positive move after weeks of sabre-rattling, the United States disclosed on Saturday that it is in “direct contact” with North Korea and is probing if Pyongyang would be open to the idea of talks over the nuclear issue.
The disclosure was made by US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Beijing, where he held talks with the Chinese leadership on the Kim Jong Un regime’s nuclear challenge and President Donald Trump’s China visit in November.
“We’re probing, so stay tuned,” US media reports quoted Tillerson as saying. “We ask, ‘Would you like to talkIJ’ We have lines of communications to Pyongyang — we’re not in a dark situation, a blackout. We have a couple, three channels open to Pyongyang.
“We can talk to them. We do talk to them,” The New York Times quoted Tillerson as saying, adding the Secretary of State, when asked whether the US channels of communication ran through China, shook his head, remarking: “Directly. We have our own channels.”
Tillerson, according to the media reports from Beijing, underscored the importance of calming things down, saying: “The whole situation is a bit overheated right now. If North Korea would stop firing its missiles, that would calm things down a lot.”
Asked if his word of caution would apply to President Trump as well, Tillerson avoided a direct comment, saying instead: “I think everyone would like for it to calm down.”
News of the efforts to hold talks comes 11 days after President Trump issued a dire warning from the United Nations that the US would have “no choice but to totally destroy” North Korea if it did not back down from its “reckless” nuclear pursuit.
“Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and his regime,” Trump had commented in his September 19 address to the UN General Assembly. While asserting that Washington was willing and able to take military action to deal with Pyongyang, Trump had, however, added: “Hopefully this will not be necessary.”
In the ensuing war of words, Kim Jong Un called Trump “mentally deranged”, terming him a “dotard”, an archaic term for senile, weak-minded elderly person. His regime also threatened to conduct an atmospheric nuclear test and held out the possibility of shooting down American warplanes in international waters.
In his earlier public comments, Trump appeared to scoff at the idea of holding talks with Pyongyang. In one of his tweets on August 30, he had commented: “The US has been talking to North Korea, and paying them extortion money, for 25 years. Talking is not the answer!”
The Associated Press, however, reported about quiet discussions for months, with “diplomatic contact... occurring regularly” between the US envoy for North Korea policy and “a senior North Korean diplomat at the country’s UN mission”.