Lawmakers call for pressure on Myanmar over Pyongyang ties
WASHINGTON: The Trump administration has slapped sanctions on companies across the globe to punish illicit trade with nuclear-armed North Korea, yet Myanmar, which is suspected of acquiring ballistic missile systems from the pariah state, has escaped the full force of the "maximum pressure" campaign.
US lawmakers of both parties say that's a worrying gap in the US sanctions regime.
A recent United Nations report cites Myanmar's "ongoing" arms relationship with North Korea underscoring longstanding suspicions Myanmar has failed to sever those military ties as it has transitioned to democracy.
"I want Burma to succeed," Republican Sen. Cory Gardner told The Associated Press, using the alternative name for Myanmar.
"I want its civilian leadership to succeed. But we can't stand idly by and watch this military trade with the tyrant in North Korea," said Gardner, who chairs a Senate panel on Asia.
Republican Rep. Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also said Myanmar officials "buying arms and propping up the North Korean regime" must be sanctioned. President Barack Obama lifted all sanctions on Myanmar in the fall of 2016 after Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was elected to power, ending five decades of army rule. That removed dozens of people and companies that had been blacklisted by the Treasury Department for human rights abuses and ties to the junta. But it also provided a reprieve to a handful of Myanmar companies and military officials accused of military trade with North Korea that violated UN Security Council resolutions.
After President Donald Trump took office, Myanmar's main player in that trade, the Directorate for Defence Industries, was designated again, but this time under a weaker sanctions authority that restricts it from US government contracts and export licensing.
However, the other Myanmar companies and persons that used to be blacklisted have not been sanctioned again, and none has been put back on the Treasury Department's list of Specially Designated Nationals. Such a designation bars them from holding any US property, doing business with Americans and conducting transactions in the US financial system.
Joseph Dethomas, a former senior State Department sanctions expert, said that for any reputable company it's bad to be under any U.S. sanctions, but "nothing makes your life more miserable than having every bank in the world know you are on the SDN list."
The UN report, recently made public, says the Directorate for Defence Industries maintains a "sophisticated global procurement network." It also mentioned Soe Min Htike Co. Ltd and Excellence Mineral Manufacturing Co. Ltd, two Myanmar companies that were also once on the Treasury blacklist.
SDN listing is a tool that Trump has used extensively on North Korea in his "maximum pressure" campaign that he credits for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's recent offer of negotiations on "denuclearization."
Despite president's surprise consent to a hold a summit with Kim by May, the administration says the campaign will continue until North Korea takes concrete action to end its nuclear program.
In the past year, the US has blacklisted about 200 companies, banks, persons and ships based in North Korea, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Marshall Islands, Russia, Georgia, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam. That has intensified North Korea's economic isolation in support of UN sanctions that have cut deeply into the North's export earnings.
Myanmar is still a potentially important source of funds for Pyongyang. JERUSALEM: Israeli police were questioning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday as part of an investigation into a corruption case involving the country's telecom giant, one of a slew of scandals that have engulfed the longruling Israeli leader.
Two Netanyahu confidants were arrested on suspicion of promoting regulation worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Israel's Bezeq telecom company in return for Bezeq's popular news site, Walla, allegedly providing favorable coverage of Netanyahu and his family.
It's the second time that Netanyahu, who held the communications portfolio until last year, is being questioned over the affair. Police declined to comment directly, but in a statement said different interrogations were underway in connection to the case.
Police were seen arriving to Netanyahu's residence Monday morning. Israeli Channel 2 TV reported that Netanyahu's wife, Sara, and son Yair are also being questioned, at another location.
Israel's Yediot Aharonot daily reported that police will question Netanyahu over allegations made by longtime family spokesman Nir Hefetz, one of the confidants arrested and later released. Hefetz has turned state's witness reportedly in exchange for full immunity. The Haaretz newspaper said he will deliver recordings of the prime minister and his wife as part of the agreement. The second confidant, Shlomo Filber, has also turned state's witness in the case.
Israeli police have already recommended indicting Netanyahu for bribery, fraud and breach of trust in two separate cases. Netanyahu is suspected of accepting lavish gifts from billionaire friends, and promising to promote legislation to help a major Israeli newspaper against its free rival in exchange for favorable coverage. Longtime aide Ari Harow is a state witness in one of those cases.