Pyongyang flouting sanctions, says UN

NEW YORK: North Korea has pressed ahead with its nuclear and missile programmes and continues to evade United Nations sanctions through increased illegal ship-to-ship transfers of oil products at sea, a UN report said on Friday.

In a 62-page report sent to the Security Council, the UN experts also listed violations of a ban on North Korean exports of coal, iron, seafood and other products that generate millions of dollars for Kim Jong-un’s regime.

Pyongyang “has not stopped its nuclear and missile programmes and continued to defy Security Council resolutions through a massive increase in illicit ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum products, as well as through transfers of coal at sea during 2018”, said the report.

The transfer of petroleum products to North Korean tankers at sea remains “a primary method of sanctions evasion” involving 40 vessels and 130 associated companies, it said.

The violations have rendered the latest sanctions “ineffective” by flouting the cap on oil, fuel and coal imposed in UN resolutions adopted last year, it added.

North Korea also “attempted to supply small arms and light weapons and other military equipment via foreign intermediaries” to Libya, Yemen and Sudan, said the report.

It named Syrian arms trafficker Hussein Al-Ali, who offered “a range of conventional arms and, in some cases, ballistic missiles to armed groups in Yemen and Libya” that were made in North Korea. With Ali acting as a gobetween, a “protocol of cooperation” between Yemen’s Houthi rebels and North Korea was negotiated in 2016 in Damascus that provided for a “vast array of military equipment”.