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| U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson |
U.S. secretary of state arrives in S. Korea for talks on Korean Peninsula issue
SEOUL, March 17 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson arrived here Friday morning for the second stop of his East Asian tour to talk with his South Korean counterpart over the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue.
The airplane carrying the top U.S. diplomat arrived in the Osan air base, some 60 km south of the capital city Seoul, at about 10:10 a.m. local time, TV footage showed.
Tillerson visited Japan on Thursday, meeting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida. He is scheduled to leave for Beijing on Saturday.
Tillerson is scheduled to meet South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who is serving as acting president as former President Park Geun-hye has been ousted through impeachment.
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U.S. state secretary says all options on table for Korean Peninsula nuke issue
SEOUL, March 17 (Xinhua) -- Visiting U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Friday that all options are on the table to resolve the Korean Peninsula's nuclear issue.
Tillerson said during a joint press conference with his South Korean counterpart Yun Byung-se in Seoul that all of diplomatic, security and economic measures and all options will be reviewed for the peninsula's denuclearization.
"All options are on the table," said the top U.S. diplomat who arrived here earlier in the day for the second stop of his first East Asian tour since taking office.
He visited Japan on Thursday, meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida. He is scheduled to fly to China on Saturday.
Before the press conference, Tillerson toured the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that has divided the two Koreas since the three-year Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice. He also visited the truce village of Panmunjom inside the DMZ.
Tillerson said a so-called "strategic patience" policy toward the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has ended, referring to the U.S. foreign policy in the past decade under which Washington had refrained from having talks with Pyongyang before its sincere efforts at denuclearization.
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