Washington and Pyongyang must back words with actions

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday offered to start direct talks with Pyongyang without preconditions. “Let’s just meet,” Tillerson said in a speech in Washington, moving away from the stumbling block of the United States’ previous demand that Pyongyang must first abandon its nuclear arsenal.

The softening of US position seems to be in response to Pyongyang’s expressed desire for direct talks with Washington, which Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last week he had passed on to his US counterpart.

The possibility of talks when the worst-case scenario seemed to be looming ever nearer would certainly be welcome.

The problem is whether Tillerson’s words count. If Pyongyang is to take the message seriously, Washington at least has to speak in one voice. Hours after Tillerson said the two countries could meet and just talk about the weather if that is what it took to get the ball rolling, the White House said President Donald Trump’s views on the issue “had not changed”.

Trump has previously said that the secretary of state was “wasting his time trying to negotiate with” Pyongyang, and the US will do “what has to be done”. Such rhetoric, in addition to the massive joint military drills between the US and the Republic of Korea on the peninsula, including the biggest-ever joint air exercise last week, will have only increased Pyongyang’s sense of insecurity, and made it more desperate than ever to secure its survival with nuclear weapons.

But, on the other hand, Pyongyang can’t have its cake and eat it too. It cannot expect Washington to engage in direct peace talks with it, while at the same time making such talks more difficult by continuing with its missile launches and nuclear tests in defiance of the United Nations resolutions that ban such reckless moves.

A “period of quiet”, as Tillerson put it, is indispensable if the deep-rooted distrust between the two sides is to be eased.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea should realize that bolstering up its nuclear force does not make it safer, rather it threatens catastrophe to itself and the region.

To avoid the worst-case scenario, the US and the DPRK must waste no time in engaging in direct talks and discussing more than just the weather.