U.S. calls for new sanctions against North Korea
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday urged new sanctions against North Korea to stop its nuclear threat, telling the United Nations Security Council that a failure to act would be "catastrophic."
Tillerson said the world community needs to increase North Korea's financial isolation and tighten sanctions already in place. He said the U.S. would not hesitate to sanction other countries that support North Korea's illegal efforts to develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, adding that he looked forward to further action by China, North Korea's patron.
Tillerson said the U.S. will not begin negotiating with North Korea until it begins to dismantle its nuclear weapons and missile programs.
“North Korea must take concrete steps to reduce the threat its illegal weapons programs pose to the United States and our allies before we’ll even consider talks,” he said.
Hours later, a North Korean ballistic missile test failed on takeoff early Saturday, the second straight failure this month, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.
North Korea's main ally, China, and Russia, two permanent members of the Security Council with the power to veto proposed resolutions, focused on U.S. missile deployments to defend South Korea, which they said amount to "destabilizing actions" that are counterproductive.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the Security Council that tensions on the Korean peninsula are “at a critical point.”
They should be eased by restarting the six-party talks involving North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States, Wang said. Those talks achieved agreements to provide economic incentives in return for limits the North’s nuclear activities, but the North cheated and violated its obligations.
Wang said the North should stop testing its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and that the U.S. should not deploy a missile defense system, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), that U.S. forces began deploying in South Korea this month.
“China calls on all parties to immediately stop the deployment process,” Wang said.
Russia also objected to the THAAD deployment.
"The whole world sits staring now, wondering if there will be a war breaking out,” because the situation on the Korean peninsula has become so "acute and dramatic," said Gennadiy Gatilov, Russia’s deputy minister of foreign affairs.
While Russia does not accept North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons or its missile testing, “everyone should be clear that the North Koreans probably will not end these activities as long as they feel there is a direct threat in the region,” Gatilov said.
A U.S. Navy strike group sailing nearby and the decision last year to deploy THAAD to South Korea “undermines the existing security balance in the region,” he said.
“We call upon the United States and other nations in the region to resist the temptation to become involved in such destabilizing actions,” Gatilov said.
British Secretary of State Boris Johnson rejected such arguments by China and Russia.
Johnson called the threat from North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests and its “bloodcurdling threats to do grievous harm to members of this council and other countries” a danger to world peace.
North Korea's economy produces about $25 billion a year, its people are so poor they've been reduced to eating leaves and tree bark, yet “the Pyongyang government continues to spend its resources on its nuclear and missile program,” Johnson said. “We should reject any claims of moral equivalence to the defensive and precautionary actions others have made."
South Korea’s Foreign Minister Yun Byungse called for specific steps to prevent "a nightmarish scenario" where the North becomes a fully-operational nuclear weapons state and spreads its technology to rogue nations and terrorists.
The world community should thwart efforts to supply crude oil to North Korea, suspend all imports of coal from the North, and consider expelling it from the United Nations as a serial offender, he said.
"Our goal is not to bring North Korea to its knees to but to bring it back to the diplomatic table,” he said.
“We must be clear about North Korea’s intentions,” which are not to negotiate an end to its nuclear program, “but to be recognized as a nuclear state,” Yun said.
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