U.S. North Korea Envoy Urges Security Council Unity on Sanctions
Pressuring Kim through crippling sanctions is crucial to the U.S. effort to get him to abandon his nuclear ambitions.
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump’s envoy for North Korea called on United Nations Security Council members to stay united in pressuring Kim Jong Un’s government to give up its nuclear weapons following the failed talks between Trump and Kim in Hanoi last month.
Special Representative Stephen Biegun briefed council members at the U.S. mission in New York on Thursday, and stressed the importance of ensuring that UN sanctions are maintained and fully implemented amid ongoing North Korea denuclearization talks, according to a diplomat who was present at the meeting and requested anonymity to discuss it.
Both China and Russia have called for easing sanctions on North Korea, a move the U.S. thinks could jeopardize the Kim regime’s willingness to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.
Pressuring Kim through crippling sanctions is crucial to the U.S. effort to get him to abandon his nuclear ambitions. A UN report this week showed North Korea is successfully evading sanctions through elaborate methods to import oil, export coal and hack into foreign banks.
Earlier this week, Biegun told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s nuclear conference in Washington that the U.S. would not accept a phased denuclearization by North Korea even as he reiterated that the Trump administration is still “very much engaged with our counterparts in North Korea.”
“We’d lift that pressure, but in exchange for only a portion of those weapons of mass destruction programs,” Biegun said at the Carnegie Endowment conference on Monday. “That would have put us in a position, a very difficult position, of essentially subsidizing what would potentially be ongoing development of weapons of mass destruction in North Korea. We need a total solution.”
After a series of missile launches and nuclear weapons tests by North Korea in 2017, the Security Council imposed three rounds of sanctions on Pyongyang, including bans on exports of iron, coal, lead, seafood and textiles as well as some oil-import restrictions.
To contact the reporter on this story: David Wainer in New York at dwainer3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, John Harney, Colin Keatinge
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