Tillerson says Korea talks show U.S. strategy is working*

*Tillerson says Korea talks show U.S. strategy is working*

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday that rare talks planned for next week between North and South Korea are a sign that the U.S.-led campaign to isolate the North is working. “It’s an indication the pressure campaign is causing the leadership, the regime in North Korea to begin to think about, ‘This can’t go on forever,’” he said in an interview with the Associated Press.

While the upcoming Winter Olympics are the only definite item on the agenda of the inter-Korean talks — the first such meeting in two years — Tillerson said North Korea might raise other matters, including its nuclear weapons. The secretary of state added that the meeting, which starts Tuesday at the border between the two countries — who have officially remained at war since 1953 — could become a platform for the North to indicate interest in talks with the U.S.

The talks could be a “vehicle through which they would like to tell us that they would like to have some discussions,” Tillerson said. “It could be meaningful, it could be important. It could be a meeting about the Olympics and nothing else happens.”