NORTH KOREA NUCLEAR THREAT: Getting DPRK to Six Party Talks

On Feb. 23, Secretary of State John Kerry gave these remarks at the State Department, with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi:

The United States and China share one of the most consequential relationships in the world. … We discussed North Korea’s increasingly provocative actions. The nuclear test that the DPRK conducted last month and its subsequent ballistic missile launches are provocative; they are threatening; they are a violation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions. And China and the United States agree completely that this — these actions merit an appropriate response through the United Nations Security Council, which was promised if they violated a resolution, and it was promised in the last resolution.

There now have been several flagrant violations of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions, and those violations threaten not only the peninsula, but they also are a threat to international peace and security. We, therefore, need to respond accordingly. And we agreed today to continue our efforts to make certain that response is forthcoming rapidly.

Today, Foreign Minister Wang and I also discussed ways that we, along with our partners in the U.N. and the Six Party Talks framework, can deepen our cooperation not only to respond to the actions that DPRK took, but equally importantly because those reactions have a purpose and that purpose is to bring the DPRK back to the table for the purpose of the Six Party Talks and particularly discussions about denuclearization.

We also discussed other issues, where our nations’ views differ as well, such as cybersecurity, human rights, the issues of nonproliferation, the importance of the nuclear summit that President Obama will host here in Washington at the end of March. I raised our concerns about the challenges on issues such as human trafficking and human rights, and we agreed to continue our discussion with specificity with respect to those issues.