Rex Tillerson, Justin Trudeau to meet to discuss North Korea, says U.S. diplomat

GUANGZHOU, China – An American diplomat says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will meet later this month to discuss the North Korea nuclear standoff.

But the prime minister’s office would not confirm what the U.S. ambassador to China, Terry Branstad, told the Fortune Global Forum, a gathering of the world’s business elite in this southern China city.

Tillerson and Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland have already announced that they will co-host a conference of about two dozen foreign ministers on the North Korean crisis sometime in the new year, somewhere in Canada.

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The goal of the conference is to brainstorm a diplomatic solution to North Korea’s recent launches of long-range missiles.

Branstad said the Trudeau-Tillerson meeting would take place on Dec. 19.

The U.S. deployed a B-1B supersonic bomber over South Korea on Wednesday as part of a large exercise involving hundreds of warplanes, in a show of force after North Korea’s most powerful test last week.