VANCOUVER _ U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called on other nations to tighten sanctions on North Korea _ including by stopping ships at sea _ until Kim Jong Un's regime agrees to begin negotiating an end to its nuclear weapons program.
"Let me be clear _ we will not allow North Korea to drive a wedge through our resolve or solidarity," Tillerson told allied foreign ministers gathered at a meeting Tuesday in Vancouver to discuss the issue that didn't include China or Russia. "The pressure campaign will continue until North Korea takes decisive steps to denuclearize."
Tillerson also said that at least one North Korean missile test _ in November 2017 _ was witnessed by passengers on a commercial airline flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong, highlighting what he called the "threat to all nations" posed by the regime.
"Based on its past recklessness, we cannot expect North Korea to have any regard for what might get in the way of one of its missiles, or parts of a missile breaking apart," Tillerson said.
The top U.S. diplomat went on to reject any proposal calling for a "freeze" on U.S.-South Korean military drills in order to get talks started, a recommendation repeatedly made by China and Russia. Kim's regime has said its weapons program is essential to its survival and has repeatedly said the U.S.'s joint drills with South Korea threaten it.
The Vancouver meeting included representatives from co-host Canada, France, Japan, the U.K., Belgium, Denmark and Thailand. But it's unclear how much the gathering will be able to achieve because Russia and China, the two countries that give North Korea its biggest financial lifeline, weren't invited.
Referring last week to Kim's repeated missile and weapons tests, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the North Korean leader has "won this match" in the contest to acquire nuclear weapons.
A focus of the Vancouver meeting, according to State Department officials, will be clamping down on North Korea's ability to evade United Nations sanctions through smuggling, with the goal of bringing the regime to the negotiating table to work on a deal to give up its nuclear-weapons program.
One focus of that effort will be on maritime interdiction _ stopping ships from bringing goods to and from North Korea. Brian Hook, Tillerson's chief of policy planning, said that may include getting the U.N. to block port access for some ships known to be involved in that trade. The U.S.-led pressure campaign has also sought to persuade countries to expel North Korean diplomats and cut any remaining ties to the country.
"The international community must be united in its approach," U.K. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said ahead of the meeting. "Sanctions are biting, but we need to maintain diplomatic pressure on Kim Jong Un's regime."
The Vancouver meeting also highlighted tensions in the international community. In a briefing to reporters Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the meeting "destructive," while China's foreign minister described it as a "meaningless" exercise meant to "blindly resort to pressure and isolation" instead of dialogue.
President Donald Trump spoke with China's President Xi Jinping on Tuesday. A White House readout of the call said the two expressed hope that the resumption of talks between the two Koreas "might prompt a change in North Korea's destructive behavior." The readout didn't mention the Vancouver talks.
There's also some division among the allies. Japan, for example, has been wary of any rapprochement with North Korea, wanting to keep talks focused only on the nuclear issue.
The U.S. argues that its pressure campaign against North Korea is working, and Trump took credit last week for a resumption of talks between Pyongyang and Seoul. Those discussions have been limited to planning for North Korea to send a delegation to next month's Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Those talks, initially heralded as a breakthrough and a way to ease tensions, are causing new strains. North Korea's Korean Central News Agency warned Sunday that an effort by South Korea to link reconciliation to denuclearization were "ill-boding" and risked "chilling the atmosphere." The two nations, which are still technically at war, have agreed to hold military talks and further high-level dialogues.
