Armed with extraordinary new UN sanctions, nations yesterday raced to ensure that North Korea’s biggest trading partners actually carry them out, an elusive task that has undercut past attempts to strong-arm Pyongyang into abandoning its nuclear weapons.
North Korea reacted angrily, vowing to bolster its arsenal and mount revenge against the US.
In a reprise of the North’s frequent, bellicose broadsides against the US, North Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs Ri Yong-ho said Washington alone was to blame for the crisis and added his country was ready to “teach the US a severe lesson” with its nuclear force.
Photo: EPA
“We will under no circumstances put the nukes and ballistic rockets on the negotiating table,” Ri said in a speech to ASEAN meeting in the Philippines.
As US President Donald Trump demanded full and speedy implementation of the new penalties, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson laid out a narrow path for the North to return to negotiations that could ultimately see sanctions lifted.
Stop testing missiles for an “extended period,” Tillerson said, and the US might deem North Korea ready to talk.
“We’ll know it when we see it,” he said in Manila. “This is not a ‘give me 30 days and we are ready to talk.’ It’s not quite that simple. So it is all about how we see their attitude towards approaching a dialogue with us.”
Since the UN Security Council vote on Saturday, Washington has put Beijing in particular on notice that it is watching closely to ensure China does not repeat its pattern of carrying out sanctions for a while, then returning to business as usual with Pyongyang.
Such concerns were on display on Sunday and yesterday in a dizzying display of fast-paced diplomacy spanning multiple continents.
South Korea’s foreign minister joined her counterparts from the US and Japan yesterday for a meeting in Manila in which Tillerson touted efforts to persuade nations to stop using North Korean labor.
The South Korean envoy held a rare, but brief meeting in Manila with Ri, who also spoke by telephone with Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov, who had discussed the sanctions with Tillerson a day before.
In a telephone call requested by Seoul, Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in committed jointly to “fully implement all relevant resolutions and to urge the international community to do so as well,” the White House said.
Moon’s office said that he and Trump had agreed to apply “the maximum pressure and sanction.”
Tillerson conceded there would likely be a lag period before the sanctions “actually have a practical bite on their revenues.”
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