Tillerson: It’s Time to Restore ‘Balance’ With Other Countries
By GARDINER HARRISMAY 3, 2017
WASHINGTON — In his first address laying out his vision as secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson said Wednesday
that the United States had been far too accommodating to emerging nations and longtime allies and that "things have gotten out of balance." Righting those imbalances, he said, will be the mission of the State Department as it fulfills President Trump’s promise to put "America first." "We were promoting relations.
Mr. Tillerson said he and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis would lead negotiations in June with high-level Chinese officials on diplomatic
and security issues, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross would oversee talks on economic and trade issues after that.
On reining in the nuclear program in North Korea, he described the effort to apply international pressure to further isolate Pyongyang as "a pressure campaign
that has a knob on it." "I’d say we’re at about dial setting 5 or 6 right now, with a strong call of countries all over the world to fully implement the U.N. Security Council resolutions regarding sanctions, because no one has ever fully implemented those," he said.
As for speaking directly with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, as President Trump recently suggested he would
be willing to do, Mr. Tillerson said North Korea needed to demonstrate its readiness for such a dialogue.
He said the next higher settings could involve penalizing countries that continue to defy United Nations sanctions on trade with North Korea.
Mr. Tillerson said the United States and China would soon begin a high-level dialogue.
