The United States and Canada are hosting a meeting Tuesday in Vancouver focused on pressuring North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland are bringing together officials from about 20 nations to look at how to better implement sanctions and prevent North Korea from evading measures put in place by the United Nations.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Tillerson said the meeting was intended to show that diplomacy “has to be backed up by a strong military alternative.”
“It’s just part of the necessity of impressing upon all parties the serious nature of this and the resolve of the United States and others that we are not going to accept a nuclear North Korea,” Tillerson said.
North Korea has defied U.N. calls for it to refrain from nuclear and ballistic missile tests. Tuesday’s meeting was called following a November test of an intercontinental ballistic missile that spiked tensions and sparked a war of words between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Those tensions have eased somewhat in recent weeks, and representatives from North and South Korea held their first formal talks in two years.
Chinese state media reported Tuesday that President Xi Jinping told Trump in a phone call that there must be efforts to maintain that momentum.
China and Russia were not invited to the Vancouver meeting. Those attending include those nations that supported South Korea in the 1950-53 Korean War, as well as Japan and South Korea itself.
Stephen Noerper, senior policy director at the New York-based Korea Society, said it would be good if China and Russia were involved, but that those nations have sidestepped the sanctions against North Korea.
“It’s China and Russia who would be the biggest violators in terms of what we’ve seen by way of transfers at sea of oils involving North Korean ships, and there have also been reports of Russia offloading coal, turning off its beacons and then going into North Korea,” Noerper told VOA.
Victor Beattie in Washington DC contributed to this report.
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