WASHINGTON -- Congress sent President Barack Obama legislation Friday that hits North Korea with more stringent sanctions for refusing to stop its nuclear weapons program.
House Republicans and Democrats joined together to overwhelmingly approve the bill by a vote of 408-2 less than a week after North Korea launched a rocket carrying a satellite into space. Pyongyang said it conducted its fourth successful underground nuclear test last month. Both actions sparked worldwide condemnation.
The Senate unanimously passed the legislation earlier this week, 96-0. Including the House vote, the six members of Arkansas' congressional delegation, all Republicans, backed the sanctions bill.
The Obama administration said it wouldn't oppose the bill, but officials declined to say whether or when Obama would sign it.
"We're philosophically and intellectually in the same place as Congress on this, so that will not be a bill that we'll oppose," White House spokesman Eric Schultz said on Friday.
The expanded sanctions from Congress come at the same time the U.S. and China are in delicate negotiations over a U.N. Security Council resolution on new sanctions, with China raising concerns about measures that could devastate North Korea's economy.
Congress's expanded sanctions are intended to deny North Korea the money it needs for the development of miniaturized nuclear warheads and the long-range missiles required to deliver them.
The legislation also authorizes $50 million over the next five years to transmit radio broadcasts into North Korea, purchase communications equipment and support humanitarian assistance programs.
Rep. Ed Royce of California, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Friday that it's time for the United States to stand with South Korea and Japan. Both countries already are responding to North Korea's aggression, said Royce, who called on Russia and China to "follow suit."
Japan announced new sanctions on Wednesday that include expanded restrictions on travel between the two countries and a complete ban on visits by North Korean ships to Japan.
South Korea cut off power and water supplies to a factory park in North Korea a day after the North deported all South Korean workers there and ordered a military takeover of the complex, which had been the last major symbol of cooperation between the rivals.
"This bill sends the message to the regime in North Korea that they must reform, and they must disarm this nuclear weapons program," Royce said. "By cutting off the regime's access to the money it needs for its army and its weapons, the bill will return us to the one strategy that has worked: financial pressure on North Korea."
The U.S., South Korea and others considered Sunday's rocket launch by North Korea a banned test of missile technology. That assessment is based on Pyongyang's efforts to manufacture nuclear-tipped missiles capable of striking the U.S. mainland. The technology used to launch a rocket carrying a satellite can be applied to fire a long-range missile.
South Korea, meanwhile, announced that its planned talks with the United States on deploying the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, one of the most advanced missile defense systems in the world, could start next week. Officials say they have yet to set a specific starting date for the talks.
In the meantime, the U.S. military command in South Korea said Saturday that an air defense battery unit from Fort Bliss, Texas, has been conducting ballistic missile training using the Patriot system at Osan Air Base near Seoul.
"Exercises like this ensure we are always ready to defend against an attack from North Korea." Lt. Gen. Thomas Vandal, commander of the U.S. Eighth Army, said.
A spokesman for U.S. Forces Korea couldn't confirm how long the Patriot missile battery from Texas would be deployed in South Korea.
Information for this article was contributed by Josh Lederman of The Associated Press.
A Section on 02/13/2016