On Thursday, China and Russia rejected a US-led campaign for further UN sanctions against North Korea over its continued ballistic missile tests, publicly dividing the UN Security Council for the first time since Pyongyang was sanctioned in 2006.
The remaining 13 council members voted unanimously in support of a resolution provided by the United States that recommended prohibiting tobacco and oil shipments to North Korea. It would also have put the Lazarus cyber organisation on the blacklist, which the US claims is linked to North Korea.
The decision was a “disappointing day” for the council, according to US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
“The introduction of new sanctions against the DPRK (North Korea) is a path to a dead end,” Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the council. “We have stressed the ineffectiveness and the inhumanity of further strengthening the sanctions pressure on Pyongyang.”
China’s U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun said that additional sanctions against North Korea would not help and would only lead to more “negative effects and escalation of confrontation.”
The U.N. General Assembly will now discuss North Korea in the next two weeks under a new rule requiring the 193-member body to meet every time a veto is cast in the Security Council by one of the five permanent members – Russia, China, the United States, France and Britain.
