US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo yesterday urged the UN Security Council to keep sanctions pressure on North Korea, in Washington’s first briefing to the top UN body on the issue since Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un’s summit.
During the one-hour meeting, Pompeo updated the council on the US drive to persuade North Korea to scrap its nuclear and missile programs and sent a clear message that tough economic sanctions should remain in place, diplomats said.
But South Korea’s Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha, who also attended the meeting, said the council must be ready to grant temporary exemptions to sanctions in specific areas such as communications to help push North Korea toward progress, they added.
Kang told the council that President Moon Jae-in is expected to visit Pyongyang in the coming months, according to diplomats.
Trump opened up prospects for an end to the standoff with North Korea when he met in Singapore on June 12 with Kim, who agreed to work toward denuclearisation of the peninsula.
The agreement however was short on details. And more than a month later, no concrete progress has been reported.
After Pompeo traveled to Pyongyang this month to try to make headway, North Korea complained that the United States was making “gangster-like” demands for rapid denuclearisation.
On her way into the meeting, Kang said Kim needed to be held accountable for his promises.
“They have made a clear commitment on complete denuclearisation repeatedly and of course very forcefully at the Singapore summit with President Trump, and we will hold them up to that commitment,” Kang said.
French Ambassador Francois Delattre said both Pompeo and Kang sought to “confirm the unity and firmness of the Security Council in the full implementation of the sanctions.”
Delattre said it was important to avoid “any premature signal of a loosening of sanctions that would be a counter-message.”
Pompeo’s talks in New York came a day after Russia and China put a six-month hold on a US request to cut off deliveries of refined oil to North Korea.
Last week, the United States asked a UN sanctions committee to order a halt to shipments of oil products to North Korea after accusing Pyongyang of exceeding a cap on fuel deliveries with illegal imports.
China and Russia have argued that North Korea should be rewarded with the prospect of eased sanctions for opening up dialogue with the United States and halting missile tests.
Pompeo told the council meeting that he expected the request to end the fuel shipments to be approved, diplomats said.
Russia and China said they needed more time to consider the US request and to review Washington’s allegations of sanctions-busting by North Korea.
A UN sanctions resolution adopted last year set ceilings for North Korea of four million barrels of crude oil per year and 500,000 barrels of refined oil products.
The United States last week sent a report to the sanctions committee that said North Korea had secured at least 759,793 barrels of oil products through ship-to-ship transfers at sea.
North Korean tankers reportedly obtain clandestine oil cargo in international waters from ships that often switch off their satellite tracking systems to prevent any monitoring of their activities.
The council last year adopted three rafts of sanctions targeting North Korea’s economy in response to Pyongyang’s sixth nuclear test and a series of ballistic missile launches.
Those sanctions banned North Korea’s exports of raw commodities while severely restricting supplies of oil -- vital for the country’s military.
Also yesterday, North Korea lambasted South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in yesterday for “needlessly kibitzing” about relations between Pyongyang and Washington and dismissed Moon’s pledge to take the driver’s seat on the Korean Peninsula as “sophistry”.
North Korean state media, which has often derided the South and its former presidents as a “puppet” of US hostile forces, has notably refrained from criticising the Moon administration especially after this year’s thaw in relations.
The Rodong Sinmun, North Korea’s official party newspaper, slammed Seoul’s recent praise of its own efforts to bring about the first inter-Korean summit in more than a decade in April, and an unprecedented summit between North Korea and the United States, under the liberal president’s peace initiative.
“It’s a self-exalting, farfetched allusion and vain kibitzing without realising their own circumstances,” the Rodong Sinmun said in a commentary.
The newspaper did not mention Moon by name but pointed to his remarks during a visit to Singapore last week that North Korea and the United States would face the “stern judgment” of the international community if their leaders fail to keep the promise they publicly made.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, with US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley and South Korean ambassador to the UN Cho Tae-yul, shakes hand with South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha before a meeting yesterday, in New York.
