U.N. slaps sanctions on defiant N. Korea
China joins in imposing $1B exports ban
UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved new sanctions Saturday to punish North Korea for its escalating nuclear and missile programs, imposing a ban on coal and other exports worth more than $1 billion — a bite in its total exports, valued at $3 billion last year.
U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley called the U.N. resolution “the single largest economic sanctions package ever leveled against the North Korean regime” and “the most stringent set of sanctions on any country in a generation.”
But she warned that it is not enough, and “we should not fool ourselves into thinking we have solved the problem — not even close.”
“The threat of an outlaw nuclearized North Korean dictatorship remains … [and] is rapidly growing more dangerous,” Haley told council members after the vote.
And, President Donald Trump isn’t ruling out a “preventive war” to stop North Korea from being able to threaten the U.S. with a nuclear weapon, said his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster.
“If they had nuclear weapons that can threaten the United States, it’s intolerable from the president’s perspective,” McMaster told MSNBC. “So, of course, we have to provide all options to do that, and that includes a military option.”
McMaster said Trump has made it clear that he is “not going to tolerate North Korea being able to threaten the United States.” Even so, the U.S. would prefer to resolve the threat “short of what would be a very costly war in terms of the suffering of, mainly, the South Korean people.”
McMaster reiterated the administration’s position that all options, including a targeted military strike, are on the table.
The U.S.-drafted resolution, negotiated with North Korea’s neighbor and ally China, is aimed at increasing economic pressure on Pyongyang to return to negotiations on its nuclear and missile programs — a point stressed by all 15 council members in speeches after the vote.
Trump tweeted: “The United Nations Security Council just voted 15-0 to sanction North Korea. China and Russia voted with us. Very big financial impact!”
The Security Council has already imposed six rounds of sanctions that have failed to halt North Korea’s drive to improve its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons capabilities.
The resolution’s adoption Saturday follows North Korea’s successful tests July 3 and July 27 of intercontinental ballistic missiles that are capable of reaching the United States.
It condemns the launches “in the strongest terms” and reiterates previous calls for North Korea to suspend all ballistic missile launches and abandon its nuclear weapons and nuclear program “in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner.”
The resolution’s centerpiece is a ban on North Korea exports of coal, iron, lead and seafood products — and a ban on all countries importing these products from North Korea. The economic hit is estimated at worth more than $1 billion in hard currency.
According to a Security Council diplomat, coal has been North Korea’s largest export, earning $1.2 billion last year, which was then restricted by the Security Council in November to a maximum $400 million. This year, Pyongyang was estimated to earn $251 million from iron and iron ore exports, $113 million from lead and lead ore exports, and $295 million from fish and seafood exports, the diplomat said.
The resolution also bans countries from giving any additional worker permits to North Korean laborers — another source of money for Kim Jong Un’s regime. It also prohibits all new joint ventures with North Korean companies and bans new foreign investment in existing ones.
It adds nine North Koreans, mainly officials or representatives of companies and banks, to the U.N. sanctions blacklist, banning their travel and freezing their assets. It also imposes an asset freeze on two companies and two banks.
The council diplomat, who was not authorized to speak publicly and insisted on anonymity, called the newly sanctioned Foreign Trade Bank “a very critical clearinghouse for foreign exchange.”
The Mansudae Overseas Project Group of Companies, which was also added to the blacklist, is described in the
resolution as engaged in exporting workers for construction, including of monuments, in Africa and Southeast Asia.
The resolution asks the Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against North Korea to ban the import of many more so-called dual-use items, which have commercial purposes but can also be used in conventional, biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.
It also gives the committee a green light to designate specific vessels that are breaking sanctions from entering ports all over the world and to work with Interpol to enforce travel bans on North Koreans who are on the sanctions blacklist.
The resolution expresses regret at North Korea’s “massive diversion of its scarce resources toward its development of nuclear weapons and
a number of expensive ballistic missile programs” — a point stressed by Haley.
It notes U.N. findings that well over half the North Korean population lacks sufficient food and medical care, while a quarter suffers from chronic malnutrition.
“These sanctions will cut deep, and in doing so will give the North Korean leadership a taste of the deprivations they have chosen to inflict on the North Korean people,” Haley said. “Revenues aren’t going toward feeding its people. Instead, the North Korean regime is literally starving its people and enslaving them in mines and factories in order to fund these illegal missile programs.”
McMaster stressed that it is “impossible to overstate the danger” posed by North Korea.
Though the economic sanctions have teeth, Washington didn’t get everything it wanted in the resolution.
In early July, Haley told the Security Council that if it was united, the international community could cut off major sources of hard currency to North Korea, restrict oil to its military and weapons programs, increase air and maritime restrictions, and hold senior officials accountable.
Neither oil nor new air restrictions are included in the resolution.
Its adoption follows U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s comments Wednesday reassuring North Korea that Washington is not seeking regime change or an accelerated reunification of the Korean Peninsula — comments welcomed by China’s foreign minister.
China’s U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi said the Chinese government hopes the United States will translate these commitments “into concrete policies” toward North Korea.
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said Moscow hopes Tillerson’s assurances “would be clear that the United States is not seeking to dismantle the existing … situation [in North Korea] or to force to reunite the country or militarily intervene in the country.”
Tillerson also said the United States wants to talk eventually with North Korea, but he thinks discussions would be unproductive if Pyongyang enters them with the intention of maintaining its nuclear weapons.
North Korea has repeatedly said it will never give up its nuclear arsenal, which it sees
as a guarantee of its security.
The resolution reiterates language from previous ones supporting a return to six-party talks with the goal of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula; expressing the Security Council’s commitment “to a peaceful, diplomatic and political solution to the situation”; and stressing the importance of maintaining peace and stability in northeast Asia.
Liu said “China has been making tireless efforts to promote denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and to uphold peace and stability,” and will keep working to persuade other governments to support its suspension-for-suspension proposal.
Under the proposal and a road map supported by Russia, North Korea would suspend nuclear and missile tests in exchange for the U.S. and South Korea suspending their joint military exercises. It also includes security measures for both North Korea and South Korea leading to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
But Haley told the Security Council that U.S.-South Korean military exercises have been carried out regularly and openly for nearly 40 years, and “they will continue.”
Russia’s Nebenzia stressed that sanctions “need to be a tool for engaging the country in constructive talks” and must not be used for “economic asphyxiation” of the country or “to deliberately worsen the economic situation.”
Tillerson today for the first time will be in the same room with his North Korean counterpart, Ri Yong Ho, at the annual ministerial meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in the Philippines.
State Department officials said the two are not expected to meet privately. “The secretary has no plans to meet the North Korean foreign minister in Manila, and I don’t expect to see that happen,” Susan Thornton, the department’s acting assistant secretary for East Asia and Pacific affairs, said in a briefing Wednesday.
But Tillerson’s actions last week led to some speculation that he might welcome a meeting with Ri. In restrained comments, Tillerson reassured North Korea about “the security they seek” and offered a new chance at economic prosperity if that country surrenders its nuclear weapons.
On the other hand, Tillerson’s comments came at the same time the United States was testing an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile in the Pacific and flying two strategic bombers over the Korean Peninsula. In addition, Vice President Mike Pence said the two nations would not hold direct talks.
Victor Cha, who served as the Asian affairs director on President George W. Bush’s National Security Council, said in an interview that Tillerson would want to show not only the North Koreans but also the rest of the world that he was open to a dialogue with the North if only to prove that alternatives to tougher sanctions had been tried.
“But I don’t think the North is interested in talking,” Cha said. “They’re not really talking to anybody — not to us, not to the Russians, not even to the Chinese.”