Russia and China vetoed this Thursday in the UN Security Council a resolution proposed by the United States to toughen international sanctions on North Korea in response to its latest missile tests.
The text received the support of thirteen of the fifteen members of the Security Council, but it did not go ahead given that Moscow and Beijing have veto power and can thus block the measurement.
The United States initiative sought to reinforce the punishments that weigh on the Government of Pyongyang, which so far this year has carried out 17 rounds of tests with missiles, in defiance of the Security Council’s own resolutions that prohibit it.
The US announced two months ago that it would seek to tighten sanctions and, since then, has tried unsuccessfully to convince China and Russia to do so, arguing that The United Nations must respond clearly to North Korean provocations. “North Korea has interpreted the silence of this Council as a green light to act with impunity and increase tension on the peninsula,” said US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield before the vote.
Nevertheless, both the Chinese and Russian delegations once again insisted that sanctions are not the right response and blamed the United States of the current situation.
Russia and China have been saying for months that what needs to be done is to lower the sanctions to recognize the rapprochement gestures that North Korea has made in recent years, in which it came to hold negotiations with the US Administration when it was led by the president. Donald Trump (2017-2021).
north korea partsfor a time he abandoned his weapons testsbut has resumed them due to the lack of progress in the dialogue with the United States, which did not achieve concrete results and which now remains frozen.
Russia and China blame the US for this blockade, considering that it did not make any concessions and did not reciprocate the gestures of the Kim Jong-un regime.
Chinese Ambassador to the UN Zhang Jun stressed today that imposing more sanctions would not only not solve the problembut it would further complicate the chances of moving forward and could punish the population at a time complicated by the covid-19 outbreak in the country.
His Russian counterpart, Vasili Nebenzia, assured that the “hard line” of the US government “has completely destroyed the positive progress” recorded in previous years. “Increasing the pressure with sanctions on Pyongyang is not only useless, it is extremely dangerous from a humanitarian point of view,” Nebenzia said.
although always have held different positions on North Koreathe powers in the Security Council had for years managed to agree on how to respond to the Kim nuclear and missile program and had avoided cross vetoes.
After imposing the first sanctions in 2006 after North Korea carried out its first atomic test, the Security Council progressively toughened punishments until 2017when he approved the most recent package, which included strong limitations on access to oil products and vetoes on exports from various sectors.
The resolution proposed today by the US sought to add new restrictions to pressure the North Korean government and, according to that country, at the same time facilitate the provision of humanitarian aid to the population.
Although outside of Russia and China the rest of the countries supported the initiative, several Member States tried until the last moment to postpone the vote to try to achieve some kind of compromise and avoid such a clear fracture in the Council, according to diplomatic sources.