Canada and the U.S. are co-hosting an international summit on Tuesday that will bring together the coalition that contained North Korean aggression almost 70 years ago. The one-day demonstration of power diplomacy in Vancouver aims to find a solution to the current crisis in the Korean Peninsula with North Korea’s increasing belligerence as it seeks to become a nuclear power.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are jointly chairing the meeting of more than 20 foreign ministers.
“Canada is really prepared to do everything we can to work towards a peaceful diplomatic solution,” Freeland told CBC News.
Freeland and Tillerson, along with Canadian defense minister Harjit Sajjan and Defense Secretary James Mattis, met Monday night to discuss pre-summit strategy.
A source from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government told CBC News that despite the presence of the defense ministers, the conference will focus almost exclusively on potential diplomatic solutions to the crisis.
China and Russia will not be represented at the meeting — neither defended South Korea in the the Korean War of 1950-53. Critics have faulted the conference for not inviting either country, with China castigating the “Cold War thinking” allegedly underlying the guest list, but Trudeau defended that decision Monday.
Trudeau told the The Canadian Press in an interview,“There are always going to be different venues and different groupings happening, and I think a diversity of approaches is better than picking one lane and deciding that this is going to be the way it happens,”
“This is an opportunity to gather together a group of nations that are historically linked through the Korean War that will be another piece, we certainly hope and feel, in the path towards resolving the conflict.”