U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has no intention of meeting the North Korean representatives at the ASEAN meetings in Phuket, Thailand today.
Clinton, speaking at a press conference with the Thai Deputy Prime Minister on Tuesday, dismissed the idea of a meeting with the North Koreans, while she also expressed her concern at burgeoning ties between North Korea and Thailand’s own unruly neighbor, Burma.
Clinton revealed that the United States is taking the rumored ties between the two countries “very seriously,” saying that if they were true it would be “destabilizing” and would “pose a direct threat to Burma’s neighbors.”
Meanwhile, speaking about how to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table, Clinton denied rumors that any new incentives were to be offered to North Korea, “We think there is a different path for North Korea to follow, that there is an opportunity which is theirs for the taking. But they have to be willing to change their behavior and agree to denuclearize North Korea, which will mean that the entire Korean Peninsula is denuclearized. And we stand ready to respond if we get any signal that there would be a serious commitment to doing that,” she concluded.
