Pompeo: N. Korea sanctions key

Only strict adherence will keep nuke goal on track, he says

South Korea’s U.N. ambassador, Cho Tae-yul, (left) walks with Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (second from right) with U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley as they head to a meeting Friday at South Korea’s mission in New York.
South Korea’s U.N. ambassador, Cho Tae-yul, (left) walks with Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (second from right) with U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley as they head to a meeting Friday at South Korea’s mission in New York.

UNITED NATIONS -- U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared Friday that the U.N. Security Council is united on the need for the fully verified denuclearization of North Korea, and he urged all countries -- especially Russia and China -- to strictly enforce U.N. sanctions to achieve that goal.

Pompeo told reporters after briefing members of the U.N.'s most powerful body that President Donald Trump "remains upbeat about the prospects for denuclearization" after his historic summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. "So do I, as progress is happening," Pompeo added without elaborating.

But America's top diplomat warned that "when sanctions are not enforced, the prospects for the successful denuclearization of North Korea are diminished."

Right now, Pompeo said, North Korea is "illegally smuggling" refined petroleum products into the country beyond the quota of 500,000 barrels per year allowed under U.N. sanctions, mainly by ship-to-ship transfers. U.S. documents sent to the Security Council committee that monitors the sanctions and obtained by The Associated Press cite 89 instances between Jan. 1 and May 30 in which North Korean tankers likely delivered refined products "illicitly procured" via such transfers.

North Korea is also evading sanctions by smuggling coal by sea, across borders, through cyberthefts and other criminal activities, and by keeping workers in some countries which he didn't name, Pompeo said.

These actions are all "generating significant revenues for the regime, and they must be stopped," he said.

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley criticized "some friends who want to go around the rules," and especially Russia and China for blocking the sanctions committee from demanding that all countries halt shipments of petroleum products to North Korea immediately. Moscow and Beijing said they needed additional time to investigate the U.S. allegations, and put a six-month "hold" on the U.S. request.

"Are they telling us that they want to continue supplying this oil?" Haley asked, standing beside Pompeo. "They claim they need more information. We don't need any more information. The sanctions committee has what it needs. We all know it's going forward."

"We put pressure today on China and Russia to abide and be good helpers through this situation, and to help us continue with denuclearization," Hailey said.

Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, told several reporters after the meeting that Pompeo confirmed the U.S. "will seek the full denuclearization" of North Korea.

"We expressed the position that along with this, steps are necessary to meet Pyongyang," he said.

"It is necessary that the denuclearization go step by step with parallel actions by the international community," Polyansky said. "We are talking about easing sanctions pressure through the U.N. Security Council, as well as the removal of unilateral U.S. sanctions."

At the historic summit between Trump and Kim last month, they agreed to work toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, without describing when and how it would occur.

Follow-up talks between Pompeo and North Korean senior officials in Pyongyang had a rocky start with North Korea accusing the United States of making "unilateral and gangster-like" demands.

Pyongyang for decades has been pushing a concept of "denuclearization" that bears no resemblance to the American definition, vowing to pursue nuclear development unless Washington removes its 28,500 troops from South Korea and the nuclear umbrella defending South Korea and Japan.

But Pompeo told reporters "the scope and scale" of denuclearization "is agreed to" and "the North Koreans understand what that means."

"We need to see chairman Kim do what he promised the world he would do," Pompeo said.

Haley made clear that Kim must take action first.

"We continue to reiterate we can't do one thing until we see North Korea respond to their promise to denuclearize," Haley said. "We have to see some sort of action. And so until that action happens, the Security Council is going to hold tight."

Separately, North Korea said Friday that an August reunion of Korean families separated by war may not happen if South Korea doesn't immediately return some of its citizens who arrived in the South in recent years.

The 2016 arrival of a group of 12 female employees from a North Korean-run restaurant in China has been a source of contention between the rival Koreas. North Korea has accused South Korea of kidnapping them, while South Korea says they decided to resettle of their own will.

North Korea has often used the women as a reason to rebuff South Korea's repeated request to allow elderly citizens split during the 1950-53 Korean War to reunite with one another temporarily. But Friday's statement is the North's first attempt to link the fate of the women to the August reunion.

The North's state-run Uriminzokkiri website said the reunion and overall inter-Korean ties could face "obstacles" if Seoul doesn't send back the women.

Seoul's Unification Ministry said it has no comment on the Uriminzokkiri dispatch.

Information for this article was contributed by Hyung-Jin Kim and Kim Tong-hyung of The Associated Press.

A Section on 07/21/2018

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