FOREIGN POLICY/NORTH KOREA/REX TILLERSON/STATE: “The U.S. doesn’t seek regime change in North Korea, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Tuesday [8-1-17], a statement at odds with suggestions last month from Central Intelligence Agency Director Mike Pompeo that the U.S. would like North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to go.
Mr. Tillerson, speaking at a news conference in Washington ahead of a multicountry trip to Asia, said the U.S. had reaffirmed its stance toward North Korea, which has conducted two intercontinental ballistic missile tests this year and five nuclear weapons tests since 2006.
‘We do not seek a regime change,’ Mr. Tillerson said. ‘We do not seek the collapse of the regime…We’re trying to convey to the North Koreans: We are not your enemy. We are not your threat. But you are presenting an unacceptable threat to us, and we have to respond.’
Instead, Mr. Tillerson wants to have a dialogue with North Korea and said the U.S. was working with the Chinese to put peaceful pressure on the regime to set the stage for talks. But Mr. Tillerson set a precondition for any such dialogue—namely, that Pyongyang enter the talks understanding there is no future for a North Korea with nuclear weapons.”
-Paul Sonne, “Tillerson Tamps Down Talk of North Korean Regime Change,” The Wall Street Journal online, Aug. 1, 2017 08:25pm