WASHINGTON — Pentagon chief James N. Mattis tried to clear up doubts about the US administration’s North Korea strategy Tuesday, backing Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson’s effort to find a diplomatic solution to the nuclear standoff.

Defense Secretary Mattis was speaking two days after President Donald J. Trump appeared to undermine his top diplomat by saying Mr. Tillerson was “wasting his time” by maintaining contacts with Kim Jong-Un’s regime.

State Department officials insist Mr. Trump was not criticizing Mr. Tillerson, but pressuring Kim Jong-Un’s regime to agree to discuss its disarmament while a diplomatic option remains on the table.

Mr. Mattis, in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the Pentagon stands four square behind the strategy — and singled out Mr. Tillerson for support.

“The international community… is focused on the destabilizing threat posed by North Korea and Kim Jong-Un’s relentless pursuit of nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities,” he said.

“The Defense Department supports fully Secretary Tillerson’s efforts to find a diplomatic solution but remains focused on defense of the United States and our allies.”

Mr. Tillerson has explained the strategy as one of using United Nations and US sanctions and diplomatic pressure to convince Mr. Kim of his isolation and force him to negotiate nuclear disarmament.

US officials insist publicly that they have military options to counter the threat from Pyongyang if this fails, but admit privately that these are limited and highly risky.

So it was hard to square Mr. Tillerson’s diplomatic push with the Trump tweets that greeted him Sunday as he flew back from meeting Chinese leader in Beijing.

“I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” Mr. Trump wrote, using his dismissive nickname for Mr. Kim.

“Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!” he added, apparently suggesting that some kind of non-diplomatic option was back on the table.

“Being nice to Rocket Man hasn’t worked in 25 years, why would it work now? Clinton failed, Bush failed, and Obama failed. I won’t fail.”

Mr. Kim is 33 years old and came to office in 2011.

But Mr. Trump appears to have been referring to previous US efforts to deal with the North Korean dictator’s father and grandfather.

While in China, Mr. Tillerson had told reporters that he was “probing” whether the North is ready for talks on the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

“So stay tuned,” he added.

“We have lines of communications to Pyongyang. We’re not in a dark situation, a blackout. We have a couple, three channels open to Pyongyang. We can talk to them. We do talk to them.”

This revelation appears to have triggered Mr. Trump’s tweeted response — which in turn sparked fresh rumors of tensions between the president and his top diplomat.

Critics seized upon the remarks to paint Mr. Tillerson as an outsider, scorned by Mr. Trump and unable to speak for the United States — most scathingly in a harsh Washington Post op-ed entitled: “Donald Trump’s dog.”

Mr. Mattis, however, was at pains to insist that the government is working together as one to counter its most urgent threat.

“President Trump’s guidance to both Secretary Tillerson and me has been very clearly that we would pursue the diplomatic efforts,” he told lawmakers.

“All we are doing is probing, we are not talking with them … So I don’t see the divergence as strongly as some have interpreted it.”

“When the Secretary says ‘probing,’ he means: we’re keeping our eyes open to see how sanctions, to see how the pressure campaign is affecting that government,” a State Department source said privately.

Mr. Mattis noted that Mr. Trump had sent Mr. Tillerson to Beijing to work with Chinese leaders to strengthen the common diplomatic response to the crisis.

“In fact this is part of a whole-of-government, integrated effort that we have under way right now,” Mr. Mattis said. “And that’s what Secretary Tillerson was carrying forward for the president.”

Still, dialogue appears distant, on the State Department’s end.

“At some point, of course, we would like to sit down and talk with North Korea. But now is not the time to do so; they are doing too many horrible activities,” added State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert. — AFP

OSLO — As the North Korean crisis rekindles the Cold War-era threat of nuclear catastrophe, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize could honor efforts to limit the spread of atomic weapons, several experts suggest.

With tensions between Washington and Pyongyang sending the risk of a nuclear confrontation soaring, the highlight of the Nobel awards season will be announced in Oslo on Friday at 11:00 a.m. (0900 GMT).

Who will bag the prestigious prize is anyone’s guess, as the names of candidates — a total of 318 this year — are by convention kept a closely guarded secret for 50 years.

After President Juan Manuel Santos won the prize last year for his efforts to bring peace to Colombia following a half-century-long conflict with rebel guerillas, a peace prize honoring non-proliferation efforts would be appropriate this year, commentators say.

“The Nobel committee would make a big splash if it awarded the prize to the Iran nuclear deal,” said Asle Sveen, a peace prize historian.

He said the honor could in such case go to former US secretary of state John Kerry, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini — key architects of the landmark 2015 accord.

The Iran deal, concluded with six world powers (the US, Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany) curbed Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for a lifting of most economic sanctions.

Its supporters say the accord ensures Iran cannot pursue an atomic bomb and shows how open dialogue can defuse even the most high-stakes crises.

But US President Donald J. Trump has threatened to tear it up, telling the UN General Assembly last month that the deal was “an embarrassment.”

Mr. Trump has recently fueled a fiery dispute with North Korea over the reclusive state’s nuclear weapons program as Pyongyang has conducted successive missile and underground atomic bomb tests.

“With North Korea also at stake, it’s very important to support initiatives that guard against the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons,” the head of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (Prio), Henrik Urdal, said.

‘THE MAN WHO MENDS WOMEN’
Although the identities of candidates for the Nobel — whose recent winners include former US president Barack Obama, Pakistani rights campaigner Malala Yousafzai and the European Union — are officially secret, those eligible to nominate individuals are free to disclose their choices.

An alternative laureate could be the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), according to the Norwegian Peace Council.

A coalition of non-governmental organizations, ICAN pushed for the adoption of a historic nuclear weapons ban treaty, signed by 122 countries in July but of a largely symbolic nature without the participation of the nine nuclear powers.

Other favorites for the prize include the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), possibly with its Italian chief Filippo Grandi, as the number of people uprooted by conflicts worldwide hit a new record of 65.6 million last year.

The UNHCR has already won the peace prize twice, in 1954 and 1981.

Peter Wallensteen, a professor at Sweden’s Uppsala University, meanwhile said he thought this year’s nod could go to Congolese Doctor Denis Mukwege, nicknamed “the man who mends women” for his treatment of survivors of sexual violence.

Syria’s “White Helmets” rescue service and Pope Francis are also believed to be on the list of contenders.

Other names circulating are the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Saudi blogger Raif Badawi and independent voices such as Russia’s Svetlana Gannushkina and the Novaya Gazeta newspaper and Turkey’s Cumhuriyet daily and its exiled former editor Can Dundar.

In the past year, two big Nobel names have passed away. The head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Kaci Kullmann Five, died of breast cancer in February, and Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, passed away in July after several weeks of conditional freedom, never able to pick up the Peace Prize awarded to him in 2010.

There has also been broad disappointment over Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 peace laureate who has been widely criticized for her failure to stop the atrocities being committed against the Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar. — AFP