Russia and China on Thursday vetoed a US draft resolution to tighten sanctions on North Korea after it resumed firing ballistic missiles, and Moscow and Beijing said tougher sanctions were futile and even aggravating the humanitarian situation in North Korea.
The US draft resolution - which was supported by the rest of the Security Council members - calls on Pyongyang to immediately suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile program, and to abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs, provided that such a retreat is complete, verifiable and irreversible.
The draft resolution stipulates reducing Pyongyang's imports of crude and refined oil, as well as prohibiting any sale or transfer of tobacco to it. The draft resolution also seeks to blacklist the Lazarus hacking group, a group the United States says is linked to North Korea.
useless
The Russian delegate to the Security Council, Vasily Nebenzia, criticized the insistence of the United States to vote on the draft resolution, although Moscow has repeatedly stressed that it would not support such a measure, and said that the tightening of sanctions against Pyongyang is not only useless, but also very dangerous given the humanitarian consequences of such measures. .
The Russian delegate to the Security Council: Tightening the sanctions on North Korea will lead to very serious humanitarian sanctions (French)
The Chinese delegate to the UN Security Council, Zhang Jun, said that relying on sanctions will not help solve the issue of the Korean Peninsula, stressing that any additional sanctions will have a significant humanitarian impact, especially in light of the outbreak of the Corona virus in North Korea.
On the other hand, the US delegate to the Security Council, Linda Thomas Greenfield, accused Russia and China of dismantling the council's unity regarding the issue of North Korean nuclear weapons, and Greenfield added that her country will continue to consider measures that can be used against Pyongyang, including sanctions, in the form of measures unilaterally, or in coordination with US allies and partners.
split board
Diplomats fear that after the project was rejected on Thursday and the UN Security Council was clearly divided over North Korea, the body may find it difficult to maintain pressure to implement the latest sanctions it imposed on Pyongyang in 2017.
The Security Council showed unity at the time in responding to North Korea's nuclear and missile tests, by approving 3 packages of economic sanctions in the areas of oil, coal, iron, fishing and textiles.
In recent months, North Korea has accelerated its missile tests, describing Washington's position on it as "hostile." Last March, Pyongyang tested an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time since 2017.
Over the past 16 years, the Security Council has steadily and unanimously escalated sanctions on North Korea to cut funding for its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, the last time the Security Council tightened sanctions against it in 2017.
Since then, China and Russia have pushed for sanctions relief on humanitarian grounds, deferring some measures behind closed doors in the Security Council's North Korea sanctions committee, but Thursday's vote marks the first time they have publicly broken consensus.