Speaking at Manila, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson indicated that the United States is ready for direct talks with North Korea if the latter stops conducting missile tests. The comments come after Secretary Tillerson met with various counterparts at the ASEAN summit in Manila and just days after United Nations’ Security Council (UNSC), led by the US slammed North Korea with new sanctions on its key exports such as coal, Iron ore, and seafood. The move, if implemented by different countries to the fullest is expected to reduce North Korea’s $3 billion exports by a third. Here are the full comments from the Secretary (highlights/emphasis are ours),

“Obviously, high on the agenda in the time that we’ve been here has been the situation with the DPRK and North Korea. And I think the strong UN Security Council resolution unanimously approved, working in coordination with China and Russia both to put out a statement from the Security Council that I think is quite clear in terms of there being no daylight among the international community as to the expectation that North Korea will take steps to achieve all of our objectives, which is a denuclearized Korean Peninsula. I think there should be no question in anyone’s mind as to the common view held by everyone on that Security Council as that being the ultimate objective.

I think we also – as you well know, ASEAN released a – what I consider to be a very strong statement as well demonstrating their commitment as well to support a denuclearized Korean Peninsula – I think a statement that’s probably stronger than any we’ve ever seen from ASEAN in terms of a view on this particular issue.

So I think two very important actions taken to hopefully send a strong message that North Korea understands the expectation of the rest of the international community going forward.

So the next steps obviously are to see that the Security Council resolution sanctions are enforced by everyone. We will be monitoring that carefully and certainly having conversations with any and all that we see who may not be fully embracing not just the spirit of those sanctions but the operational execution of those sanctions.

And we hope, again, that this ultimately will result in North Korea coming to the conclusion to choose a different pathway, and when the conditions are right that we can sit and have a dialogue around the future of North Korea so that they feel secure and prosper economically.”

When asked by a reporter on the preconditions for the United States to begin talks with North Korea, Secretary Tillerson said (highlights/emphasis are ours),

“….the best signal that North Korea could give us that they’re prepared to talk would be to stop these missile launches. We’ve not had an extended period of time where they have not taken some type of provocative action by launching ballistic missiles. So I think that would be the first and strongest signal they could send us is just stop, stop these missile launches. Obviously, we have other means of communication open to them, to certainly hear from them if they have a desire to want to talk.”