Peters dismisses North Korea’s ‘rhetoric’ over UN sanction monitoring
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has dismissed North Korea’s “aggressive rhetoric” over New Zealand’s role in the monitoring of United Nations sanctions on the nuclear-armed dictatorship.
“North Korea would better serve its people by meaningfully re-engaging with the international community through diplomacy rather than threats,” Peters said yesterday.
The North Korean foreign ministry on Monday issued a statement criticising the United States and its “allies”, including New Zealand, for dispatching “warships and warplanes” to the region under the “pretext” of monitoring sanctions.
It said North Korea would “take necessary measures to firmly defend the sovereignty and security of the state”.
“Such allies of the US as Germany, France and New Zealand have also dispatched their warships and warplanes to the Asia-Pacific region including the waters around the Korean peninsula one after another this year, encroaching upon the security interests of regional countries and escalating the military tension in the region.”
Peters, in response, said New Zealand stood proudly with the international community in upholding the sanctions on North Korea through monitoring and surveillance.
The UN Security council has passed 10 resolutions placing sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear-weapons and ballistic missile programme, sanctions which restrict its exports and imports of certain resources, including limiting the amount of petrol it can import.
Since 2018, New Zealand has sent aircraft to the region to assist with monitoring the sanctions. In a 2019 briefing on the first such deployment, officials said New Zealand surveillance aircraft had spent a month in the region and “successfully captured relevance intelligence and assisted in the detection and deterrence of illicit [North Korean] activity”, such as ship-to-ship transfers.
“North Korea continues to defy UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolutions. The UNSC sanctions regime is a key element of the global effort to peacefully apply pressure on North Korea to denuclearise and abandon its ballistic missile programme,” Peters said.
He said, as foreign minister in the mid-2000s, he travelled to the North Korean capital Pyongyang for six-party talks with the hope of ending the country’s nuclear programme.
“The window existed then for a diplomatic solution that had the potential to see North Korea abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. If it had taken that sensible step then, North Korea and its citizens would today be a more secure and prosperous nation.
“It is never too late for diplomacy to achieve what Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programmes never will, namely the reintegration of North Korea into the peaceful community of nations. Only then will its people have the full opportunity for the security and prosperity that a stable and peaceful region can offer.”