December 20, 2017 | By: DAVID KRAYDEN –
OTTAWA — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland announced Tuesday there will be a special summit on the North Korean threat to be held in Vancouver in January 2018.
The forum will be jointly hosted by Tillerson and Freeland who are inviting to attend all the nations who fought in the Korean War of 1950-53.
The list of invitees is being called the “Vancouver Group” until further notice and both Tillerson and Freeland expressed hope that the rebuilt coalition will assist in de-escalating the nuclear crisis in North Korea.
“We continue to find ways to advance the pressure campaign against North Korea, and send a unified message from the international community: ‘We will not accept you as a nuclear weapons nation,’” Tillerson stated, adding that “full and complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” was the objective.
Tillerson further emphasized that the conference would be sending a clear signal to North Korea that the rest of the world is concerned about its nuclear program and is ready to negotiate with the North Koreans, but “we can’t talk unless North Korea is ready to talk.” Tillerson promised to keep up the “pressure campaign” on the rogue state. “We will not be rolling any of it back,” he said.
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