UN ramps up sanctions against ‘aggressive’ N Korea

THE United Nations Security Council unanimously stepped up sanctions against North Korea yesterday over the country’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test on September 3, imposing a ban on its textile exports and capping imports of crude oil.

It was the ninth sanctions resolution unanimously adopted by the 15-member council since 2006 over North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs.

The United States, which had proposed banning all oil imports to the Asian country, watered down an initial tougher draft resolution to win the support of Pyongyang allies China and Russia.

Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, welcomed the resolution.

“The international community has shown it is united against the illegal and reckless acts by the North Korean regime. By adopting these new meas- ures, we have the most stringent UN sanctions regime placed on any nation in the 21st centur,” he said.

“This resolution will curtail gas, petrol and oil imports. It will ban all textile exports, taking hundreds of millions of dollars from the export revenues that the North Korean regime uses to fund its illegal nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. And it will end the exploitation of DPRK labourers abroad.

“The North Korean regime bears full responsibility for the measures that the UN Security Council has enacted. It is their continued, illegal and aggressive actions that have brought us to this point, and it is North Korea that must change its course.”

Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said the United States was not looking for war with North Korea, and that Pyongyang had “not yet passed the point of no return”.

“If it agrees to stop its nuclear programme, it can reclaim its future. If it proves it can live in peace, the world will live in peace with it,” she told the council after members adopted the new sanctions.

“Today’s resolution would not have happened without the strong relationship that has developed between President Trump and Chinese President Xi,” Ms Haley said. Textiles were North Korea’s second-biggest export after coal and other minerals in 2016, totalling $752 million, according to data from the Korea Trade-investment Promotion Agency. Nearly 80 per cent of the textile exports went to China.

The resolution imposes a ban on condensates and natural gas liquids, a limit of two million barrels a year on refined petroleum products, and a cap on crude oil exports to North Korea at current levels. China supplies most of North Korea’s crude.

A US official said North Korea imported 4.5 million barrels of refined petroleum products annually and four million barrels of crude oil. The resolution to be voted on represented a swift response to the recent nuclear test explosion by North Korea – which the regime has said was a hydrogen bomb – and to Pyongyang’s escalating launches of increasingly sophisticated ballistic missiles that it says can reach the United States.

But the provisions were a significant climbdown from the toughest ever sanctions that the Trump administration proposed in the initial draft resolution it circulated last Tuesday, especially on oil. A complete ban on oil sales could have crippled North Korea’s economy.