US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Saturday that Washington has opened channels to North Korea to find out if the regime is ready to talk about giving up its nuclear weapons.

Speaking after a day of talks with China’s President Xi Jinping and top diplomats, Tillerson told reporters that US officials are in touch with Pyongyang.

The disclosure follows an escalating war of words between US President Donald Trump and North Korean strongman Kim Jong-Un, and Tillerson issued a call for calm.

Asked how he could know whether the North would even contemplate responding to new sanctions by coming to the table, the US envoy said: “We are probing, so stay tuned.”

Washington has no diplomatic ties with Pyongyang, and has been leaning on Beijing to rein in its neighbor’s behavior through tougher sanctions.

But Tillerson said US diplomats do not rely on China as a go-between in overtures to North Korea, and have themselves talked directly through “our own channels.”

“We ask,” he said. “We have lines of communication with Pyongyang. We’re not in a dark situation, a blackout, we have a couple, three channels open to Pyongyang.”

“We can talk to them, we do talk to them,” he said.

Source: AFP