Trump and Tillerson play word games on talks with North Korea

US President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson just can’t seem to get their stories straight when it comes to North Korea.

One minute Tillerson is saying the US is ready to talk to North Korea any time, no “preconditions” needed; the next, the White House is issuing a statement saying, forget it, “now is not the time for talks”.

So what’s going on? Tillerson’s remarks seemed to open the door to dialogue, but analysts say they were mainly for show. He had to have known, when he uttered them at a session of the influential Atlantic Council in Washington, that North Korea is not going to agree to talks no matter what he says.

That’s because the North Koreans insist that the United States first recognise North Korea as a nuclear power. Then maybe Kim Jong-un will be interested in talks on a “peace treaty” conditioned on US withdrawal of all its troops.

So, really, when the White House appears to be contradicting Tillerson’s display of openness, it’s all a word game. The US and North Korea may be communicating through “the UN channel” with Joseph Yun, the State Department’s lead negotiator on North Korea, talking to some North Korean diplomat from the North’s UN mission in New York, but those conversations are not really going anywhere.