A group of seven nations is reviewing a draft of a U.N. resolution that would condemn North Korea's recent nuclear test and call for the expansion and strict enforcement of sanctions against the reclusive country, Reuters reported yesterday (see GSN, May 28).
(May. 29) -
The U.N. Security Council meets earlier this month. The body's five permanent members, along with South Korea and Japan, are preparing a draft resolution responding to North Korea's nuclear test (Emmanuel Dunand/Getty Images).
The group -- comprising China, France, Japan, Russia, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States -- is negotiating a document to present to the entire 15-member U.N. Security Council. A tentative version of the proposed resolution, prepared by Tokyo and Washington, "condemns in the strongest terms the nuclear test" as a "flagrant violation and disregard of its relevant resolutions," and urges its members to enforce more faithfully sanctions imposed after the North's 2006 nuclear test.
Those sanctions, which included bans on nuclear and long-range ballistic missile tests, have been weakened by spotty enforcement (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters I, May 28).
One diplomat said the parties are weighing a stipulation that all 192 U.N. member states submit a report within 30 days of the resolution's passage outlining what steps they are taking to implement the sanctions against North Korea, the Associated Press reported (Edith Lederer, Associated Press I/Yahoo News, May 28).
They are also talking about broadening the sanctions, diplomats said. It is possible that updates to the resolution would include an expanded list of firms blacklisted for dealing in arms with Pyongyang, a blanket ban on the country's weapons trade, banking and travel restrictions aimed at individuals within the North's Stalinist government, and measures that would isolate the regime from the benefits of global finance (Charbonneau, Reuters I).
In order to avoid these punishments, North Korea would probably be required to impose a moratorium on further nuclear tests, readmit U.N. nuclear inspectors, rejoin the six-party denuclearization talks and sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, a diplomat said. Pyongyang walked away from the talks and expelled all outside nuclear monitors after facing Security Council condemnation for its April 5 rocket launch (Lederer, Associated Press I).
The seven nations' inability so far to reach consensus on the details of the resolution after three rounds of talks makes it doubtful they will complete a draft to the full Security Council in time for it to pass by the end of this week, Kyodo News reported.
Japan today made it clear it wants a resolution passed by early next week at the latest. "(Security Council members) have a shared view that they should issue it swiftly," said Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone. "I would say (the adoption) should come much earlier than the middle of next week" (Kyodo News/Breitbart.com, May 28).
North Korea today said it would retaliate against any "provocation" from the Security Council, without declaring what it would consider provocation or what countermeasures it was willing to take, AP reported.
"If the U.N. Security Council makes a further provocation, it will be inevitable for us to take further self-defense measures," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said.
It added that the council was being hypocritical by condemning Pyongyang's underground nuclear test when its members conducted so many of their own in past years.
"There is a limit to our patience," it said. "The nuclear test conducted in our nation this time is the Earth's 2,054th nuclear test. The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council have conducted 99.99 percent of the total nuclear tests" (Siyoung Lee, Associated Press II/Google News, May 29).
A South Korean official said the North today fired another short-range missile, apparently a ground-to-air weapon able fly 160 miles. The east coast launch was the six such shot since Monday, AP reported. The official said the North also appears to be readying a missile launch site on the west coast of the peninsula (Associated Press III/New York Times, May 29).
Meanwhile, the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization announced today that initial findings indicate that the event that shook East Asia on Monday was similar to both an explosion and an earthquake, Reuters reported.
"It was in the low one-digit kiloton (range) in magnitude," CTBTO Executive Secretary Tibor Toth told reporters.
While North Korea said it detonated a nuclear weapon underground, scientists have not been able to fully verify that claim -- and won't, the organization said, until they can confirm the nature of the explosion by measuring radioactive particles in the atmosphere. That confirmation is not expected to come before next week (Mark Heinrich, Reuters II, May 29).
The U.S. State Department yesterday announced it was sending a delegation led by Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg to Southeast Asia to discuss a response to the blast, Reuters reported.
Department officials said Steinberg and U.S. special envoy to North Korea Stephen Bosworth would visit Japan, China, Russia, and South Korea -- the nations that joined Washington in the six-party talks aimed at persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear program. They would not be visiting North Korea, the officials said.
"Deputy Secretary Steinberg plans to lead an interagency delegation to the region to consult with our five-party partners on the next steps to respond to North Korea's defiance of the international community," said State Department spokesman Ian Kelly (Reuters III, May 29).
The United States is expected to look to China especially for help in exercising diplomatic leverage over Pyongyang, the New York Times reported.
While Washington has been "pleasantly surprised" at China's cooperation so far, according to one high-level U.S. official, it is not yet clear how far Beijing -- the Stalinist state's top ally -- would be willing to go in pressuring North Korea. Kim Jong Il, North Korea's dictator, is believed to keep money in Chinese banks, and the United States might ask Beijing to sever his cash flow.
China has long been reluctant to lean too hard on Kim's regime, concerned that doing so could create a refugee crisis on its border. However, the official suggested that Pyongyang might have crossed a line with Monday's nuclear test, which occurred not far from the Chinese border.
"At this level of Chinese irritation, this is historic," the official said. "Normally, the Chinese urge us not to react. But they are reaching a point where they could be agreeable to using more of their own weight" (Landler/Sanger, New York Times, May 29).
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates today said China's unusually vocal expressions of dissatisfaction with North Korea might be due to the fact that Monday's explosion caught Beijing by surprise, the Wall Street Journal reported.
"Just based on what the Chinese government has said publicly, they're clearly pretty unhappy about the nuclear test in particular, and they weren't very happy about the missile test, either," Gates said.
He emphasized the importance of Beijing's cooperation in supporting an effective international response, but added that he doesn't want to "put the burden solely on China."
"The reality is while China has more influence probably than anybody else on North Korea, I believe that influence has its limits," Gates said. "It is important for the Chinese to be a part of any effort to try to deal with these issues" (Peter Spiegel, Wall Street Journal, May 28).
Gates tomorrow is slated to address a conference in Singapore on Asian security, where he is also expected to confer privately with regional allies about an international response to the North Korean actions.
While preparing for the so-called “Shangri-La Dialogue,” sponsored by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, “this was not a large topic for the agenda,” a senior defense official told Global Security Newswire this week. In the wake of the tests, “I think it’s safe to say that this will be discussed in detail and extensively at the Shangri-La Dialogue, in addition to all the other things that we planned on talking about,” the official said in a Wednesday interview.
The conference presentations are to address a wide array of issues, to include cooperative defense measures, military technology, and energy and food security (Elaine M. Grossman, Global Security Newswire).