“These are among the toughest measures we have agreed against any country in the world, certainly the toughest ever against the DPRK” (North Korea), said British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft.
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The latest sanctions mean all cargo to and from North Korea will now be subject to inspection.
“The draft is very strong and, if adopted as now written, was definitely worth the wait it took to plug loopholes and toughen restrictions on transport and finance”, William Newcomb, a former member of the United Nations Panel of Experts on North Korea, told Reuters.
European Union foreign ministers have reinforced their sanctions several times in recent years to include asset freezes and bans on financing and the delivery of bank notes. It prohibits all exports of gold, titanium ore, vanadium ore and rare earth minerals and bans aviation fuel exports to the country, including “kerosene-type rocket fuel”.
US President Barack Obama also welcomed the UN resolution, calling it “a firm, united, and appropriate response by the global community” to halt Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programmes.
North Korea routinely test-fires missiles and rockets, but it often conducts more weapons launches when angered at global condemnation.
The United States and China, North Korea’s traditional ally, spent seven weeks negotiating the new sanctions.
North Korea’s Ambassador Se Pyong So dismissed the speech, saying his country’s nuclear programme was created to ensure peace on the Korean peninsula and warned that more sanctions would bring a “tougher reaction”.
“Today, the global community, speaking with one voice, has sent Pyongyang a simple message: North Korea must abandon these risky programs and choose a better path for its people”, Obama said in a statement. But North Korea is likely to find ways around some of them.
A South Korean war veteran waves a South Korean national flag during a rally against North Korea’s rocket launch and nuclear test in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, March 1, 2016. USA officials engaged in extensive negotiations with their Chinese counterparts on specific provisions, including language that the sanctions aren’t meant to have “adverse humanitarian consequences” for North Korean civilians.
Previous resolutions were adopted in 2006, 2009 and 2013 each when North Korea tested its atomic devices.
As a way out and in order to earn their living, they are compelled to continue to fabricate and sell groundless testimonies by trying to make them sound as shocking as possible. It will become law after it is signed by President Park Geun-hye. It is required to transfer that information to the Justice Ministry, a step parliamentary officials say would provide legal grounds to punish rights violators in North Korea when the two Koreas eventually reunify.
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As the Security Council prepared to vote on the resolution Wednesday, North Korea’s media reported that Kim had visited a factory that produces ballistic missiles and subsystems.
