Putin rebuffs sanctions, favors N. Korea security
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin again rejected U.S. calls for new sanctions against North Korea after its most powerful nuclear test, echoing China’s resistance to more punitive measures to pressure the North into abandoning its atomic and missile programs.
The Russian leader Tuesday criticized sanctions as “useless and ineffective,” instead urging the international community to offer security guarantees to North Korea.
“They’ll eat grass, but they won’t abandon their program unless they feel secure,” he told reporters at an emerging markets summit in Xiamen, China, which was hosted by his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Monday that the Trump administration would seek the strongest possible sanctions against Kim Jong Un’s regime. Kim was “begging for war” after testing what
he claimed was a hydrogen bomb, she said after a meeting of the U.N. Security Council.
Haley said the U.S. would circulate new draft sanctions and wants the Security Council to vote on them Monday.
Japan backed the U.S., with Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso on Tuesday calling for additional measures. “There’s no chance of talks progressing without increasing pressure,” Aso told reporters in Tokyo.
But Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said that despite good intentions, sanctions against North Korea aren’t working and Moscow wants a new U.N. resolution to focus more on a political solution to the crisis.
Nebenzia warned that new economic sanctions would affect ordinary Koreans, not the nuclear or missile programs.
Haley, too, signaled the limitations of sanctions during an event in Washington on Tuesday, though she stood by her call for a tougher measure. “Do we think more sanctions are going to work? Not necessarily, but it cuts off revenue to allow them to develop missiles.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, meanwhile, said it is “absolutely crucial” that the Security Council is united in dealing with North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, and that the U.S., Russia, China, Japan and South Korea use one strategy.
Putin on Tuesday condemned what he described as a policy of whipping up war hysteria, which he said could lead to a “global catastrophe and a huge number” of human casualties. “There’s no other path except for a peaceful, diplomatic resolution of the North Korean nuclear problem,” he said.
The North’s missile test prompted a second-straight day of military maneuvers by South Korea meant as a show of force.
And as the South ratchets up its defense capabilities, Washington and Seoul agreed to lift restrictions on South Korean missiles, according to the South Korean presidential office, allowing Seoul to improve its pre-emptive strike capabilities against the North. The deal, revealed Tuesday, removes a 1,100-pound warhead limit on South Korea’s maximum-range missiles.
South Korean missile development has been limited by a bilateral “guideline” between Washington and Seoul since the late 1970s. It was updated in 2012 to allow the South to increase the range of its weapons from 186 miles to 497 miles.
The removal of the cap would allow the South to potentially target the North’s underground facilities and shelters.
In addition to expanding its missile arsenal and holding military exercises, South Korea is strengthening its missile defense, which includes the high-tech Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery deployed in the southeastern county of Seongju.
North Korea is thought to have a growing arsenal of nuclear bombs and has spent decades trying to perfect a multistage, long-range missile to eventually carry smaller versions of those bombs. Diplomacy and severe sanctions have failed to check its march to nuclear mastery.
U.S. President Donald Trump, asked in Washington if he would attack North Korea, said, “We’ll see.” No U.S. military action appeared imminent, and the immediate focus appeared to be on ratcheting up economic penalties.
In tweets earlier this week, Trump threatened to halt all trade with countries doing business with North Korea, a clear warning to China. Such a move would be radical since the U.S. imports about $40 billion in goods a month from China. China called that threat unacceptable and unfair.
Sunday’s nuclear detonation, the North’s sixth, builds on recent North Korean advances that include test launches in July of two intercontinental ballistic missiles, which, when perfected, could target the U.S. mainland. The North also threatened to launch a salvo of Hwasong-12 intermediate range missiles toward the U.S. Pacific island territory of Guam, the home of military facilities the North claims are meant to target it.
The U.S. has about 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea and is obliged by treaty to defend it in the event of war.
The Korean Peninsula has been in a technical state of war since the Korean War ended in an armistice in 1953.
S. KOREA GOALS SHIFT
South Korean President Moon Jae-in, whose May election win ended nine years of conservative rule, has had to shift some of the goals of his campaign promise of a new era of engagement with the North and take on a military overhaul intended to keep the regime at bay.
Kim, for his part, has shunned overtures from Moon, saying he’ll never negotiate away his nuclear weapons if the U.S. maintains its hostile policy.
“Moon is showing that he’s pragmatic,” said John Blaxland, head of the Australian
National University’s Strategic and Defence Studies Center in Canberra. “The circumstances are more dire than he faced when he took office. He isn’t as doggedly ideologically left as some might have anticipated.”
Still, for Trump, Moon hasn’t gone far enough. Tensions between the leaders surfaced recently, when Moon asserted a right to veto any U.S. strike against North Korea. After Sunday’s hydrogen bomb test, Trump dismissed Moon’s approach as “appeasement.” A day earlier, Trump reportedly threatened to end the 5-year-old U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement.
His threat faced push-back Tuesday, when Republican and Democratic lawmakers released a joint statement in defense of the agreement, saying it is vital to key industries in America’s heartland.
Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas; Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass.; Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah; and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., issued the statement on the trade deal, which business leaders say has boosted the very workers who voted Trump into the White House.
While Trump and Moon spoke by phone Monday and agreed “to maximize pressure on North Korea using all means at their disposal,” analysts agreed that tensions remain strong.
“There is little affinity between Moon and Trump and grave concern in South Korea about where the Trump administration is taking things,” Blaxland said.
While Moon’s administration confirmed Tuesday that it still seeks the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, Trump’s comments have increased speculation that he’d be willing to tolerate collateral damage in Seoul to protect the U.S. from a nuclear attack. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told NBC News in August that Trump told him that “if thousands die, they’re going to die over there.”
Moon, the son of North Korean refugees, has continued to seek dialogue even as he bolsters South Korea’s defenses. On Tuesday, he told Russia’s Tass news agency that he wanted to lay the foundation for peace, though the situation now is “not very good.”