China denies u.s. allegation of selling oil to n. korea

Earlier, President Donald Trump said on Twitter that China had been ‘caught RED HANDED’ allowing oil into North Korea.

China on Friday denied reports it had been illicitly selling oil products to North Korea in violation of UN sanctions, after US President Donald Trump said he was unhappy that China had allowed oil to reach the isolated nation.

China on Thursday blocked a US effort at the United Nations to blacklist six foreignflagged ships—five of which were mainland-China- or Hong Kong- owned— that Washington believes had engaged in illicit trade with North Korea, a UN Security Council diplomat said.

Trump said on Twitter on Thursday that China had been “caught RED HANDED” allowing oil into North Korea and that would prevent “a friendly solution” to the crisis over Pyongyang’s development of nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the United States.

In a subsequent New York Times interview, Trump explicitly tied his administration’s trade policy with China, North Korea’s neighbor and lone major ally, to cooperation in resolving the North Korea standoff.

“I have been soft on China because the only thing more important to me than trade is war,” he said. “If they’re helping me with North Korea, I can look at trade a little bit differently, at least for a period of time. And that’s what I’ve been doing. But when oil is going in, I‘m not happy about that.”

South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper this week quoted South Korean government sources as saying that US spy satellites had detected Chinese ships transferring oil to North Korean vessels about 30 times since October.

Chinese Foreign Ministry