“This will not be a bill that we oppose”. “By cutting off the regime’s access to the money it need for its army and its weapons, the bill will return us to the one strategy that has worked: financial pressure on North Korea”. It also authorizes the seizing of any assets connected with North Korea’s actions and requires enhanced inspection requirements for ships that carry North Korean cargo.
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House Speaker Paul Ryan said the House would consider the amended version of the bill this week, and aides said the vote would likely take place on Friday morning.
North Korea is committed to striking the United States with a nuclear-armed missile, but it can’t do so without outside help, due to shortfalls in its own technology, the Pentagon said Friday. It is believed to be the strongest sanctions bill ever introduced in Congress against the communist nation.
The Senate adopted the legislation Wednesday, following a similar move by the House earlier this month.
Pyongyang conducted its fourth underground nuclear test last month.
96-0 and the House again by 406-2.
The new legislation seeks additional sanctions – both mandatory and at the discretion of the president – against the government of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and those who assist it. That is why I cosponsored and supported this important North Korea sanctions legislation.
U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was joined by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of Senators in voting to expand and strengthen sanctions aimed at the North Korean regime.
The bill also bans foreign assistance to any country that provides lethal military equipment to North Korea, and targets Pyongyang’s trade in key industrial commodities.
Royce said the latest sanctions will be as painful to the North as the banking restrictions that hit Pyongyang hard in 2005.
“This is about North Korea, it’s not about punishing China”, he told AFP.
The so-called “BDA sanctions” are considered the most effective sanctions on the North ever.
The legislation would sanction anyone who engages in, facilitates or contributes to North Korea’s proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, arms-related materials, luxury goods, human rights abuses, activities undermining cyber security and the provision of materials for such activities.
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Gardner also welcomed Friday’s passage.
