VANCOUVER--The world needs to step up pressure on North Korea to force it to abandon its nuclear weapons program and should not be fooled by Pyongyang's charm offensive with South Korea, participants at a 20-nation meeting said in Canada on Tuesday.
"We must increase the costs of the regime's behaviour to the point that North Korea must come to the table for credible negotiations," U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the one-day meeting he co-hosted with Canada in Vancouver.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has refused to give up development of nuclear missiles capable of hitting the United States in spite of increasingly severe U.N. sanctions, raising fears of a new war on the Korean peninsula.
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono said the world should not be naive about North Korea's "charm offensive" in engaging in talks with South Korea ahead of next month's Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. "It is not the time to ease pressure, or to reward North Korea," he said. "The fact that North Korea is engaging in dialogue could be interpreted as proof that the sanctions are working."
Tillerson said North Korea must not be allowed "to drive a wedge" through allied resolve or solidarity and reiterated Washington's rejection of a Chinese-Russian proposal for the United States and South Korea to freeze military exercises in return for a freeze in North Korea's weapons programmes.
Tillerson said the group in Vancouver, which supported South Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War, would aim to improve the effectiveness of the U.S.-led "maximum pressure" campaign on Pyongyang. He urged China and Russia to fully implement U.N. sanctions.
China and Russia, which backed the North in the war, have sharply criticized the meeting, which was announced after North Korea tested its biggest ever intercontinental ballistic missile last November, as an example of "Cold War" thinking. While both have signed up to U.N. sanctions, they have been accused of not doing enough to ensure proper implementation, something they deny.
"We cannot abide lapses or sanctions evasion," Tillerson said. "We will continue to call attention to, and designate, entities and individuals complicit in such actions."
Tillerson said all countries needed to work together to improve interdiction of ships attempting to skirt the sanctions and said there must be "new consequences" for North Korea "whenever new aggression occurs."
A senior State Department official told reporters every country had a role to play, whether it was in sharing intelligence or refusing to allow ships that have engaged in illicit activity into their ports. The White House has welcomed news that China's imports from North Korea plunged in December to their lowest in dollar terms since at least the start of 2014, but U.S. President Donald Trump accused Beijing last month of allowing oil into North Korea.
Western European security sources told Reuters last month Russian tankers had supplied fuel to North Korea on at least three occasions in recent months by transferring cargoes at sea.
Earlier on Tuesday, Chinese state media said Chinese President Xi Jinping told Trump in a phone call that unity on the North Korean issue was extremely important and the hard-earned easing of tensions must continue.
