U.N. readies sanctions on North Korea
South Korea, U.S. to discuss missile defense system
NEW YORK — North Korea’s launch of a long-range rocket prompted the U.S. and South Korea to announce talks on the possible deployment of a missile defense system — a move seen as a transformation of north Asia’s security landscape that is bound to rile China — as the United Nations Security Council vowed to quickly adopt a resolution with significant new sanctions.
North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, went ahead with the launch just two hours after an eight-day window opened early Sunday. He ignored an appeal from China, its neighbor and important ally, not to proceed and — in what was viewed as another slap to Beijing — he chose the eve of the Chinese New Year, the country’s most important holiday.
In what was seen as a reflection of heightened hostilities between the rival Koreas, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said a South Korean naval vessel fired five shots into the water as a warning today when a North Korean patrol boat briefly moved south of the countries’ disputed boundary line in the Yellow Sea.
A new resolution may be readied in the next few days, Venezuela’s U.N. Ambassador Rafael Ramirez, the council president for February, told reporters — although Russia’s Ambassador Vitaly Churkin suggested some disagreements persist. “We are not there yet,” he said.
Sunday’s launch, which came a month after North Korea defied the international community by holding its fourth nuclear test, was seen as underscoring the limited impact that U.S. pressure and a decade of U.N. sanctions have had on curbing Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions. The Obama administration’s push for tougher punishment from the U.N. has run into resistance from China, which sees the Thaad missile-defense system that the U.S. and South Korea are discussing as a threat that could be used against its own missiles.
A deployment is seen as an action that could also spur Japan to look at using it, even amid high suspicions in the region over Japan’s World War II military aggression.
“What is at stake here after outrageous provocation, is the future of the proliferation regime that we patiently built together over the last decades,” Francois Delattre, France’s ambassador to the U.N., said at an emergency security council meeting Sunday. “That’s why weakness is simply not an option.”
The Security Council needs to develop tough sanctions that exceed the expectations of Mr. Kim, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said.
In a joint statement, the U.S. and South Korea said that if Thaad were deployed, it would only be used to target North Korea.
But China is “deeply concerned” about the talks on Thaad, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in a statement.
The system would only be deployed on U.S. bases in South Korea, and talks on the terms for that have no clear timetable. The discussions are viewed as a move that could face resistance from a South Korean public wary of hurting ties with China.
The U.S. and China have been trying to agree on new sanctions since North Korea conducted a nuclear test Jan. 6. China had been pushing for more dialogue rather than new sanctions.
North Korea insists its rocket firings are for peaceful scientific purposes, while the U.S. views them as tests of ballistic missile technology that could eventually be used to carry nuclear weapons to U.S. shores.