Abe swipes at China, Russia over N. Korea

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called on China and Russia to do more to stop North Korea after the isolated regime test-fired its second intercontinental ballistic missile in a month.

Abe, speaking after a phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump, told reporters on Monday that they agreed more action was needed to mitigate the threat from North Korea.

The comments echoed a statement over the weekend from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who called China and Russia “economic enablers” of the regime.

“We have made consistent efforts to resolve the North Korean problem in a peaceful manner, but North Korea has ignored that entirely and escalated the situation in a one-sided way,” Abe said in Tokyo.

“The international community, starting with China and Russia, must take this obvious fact seriously and increase pressure.”

The comments add to a growing rift between the world’s major powers over how to respond to Kim Jong Un’s regime. The U.S. and its allies want China and Russia — which account for the bulk of North Korea’s trade — to cut off financial flows to the country, while Beijing and Moscow are pushing for both sides to compromise.

The U.S. and North Korea, not China, are responsible for the increased tensions on the Korean Peninsula, so they have responsibility to “get things moving in the right direction,” Liu Jieyi, China’s ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters in New York on Monday.