UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council has unanimously imposed new sanctions on North Korea following its latest intercontinental ballistic missile test, a move that analysts said could have a significant impact on the isolated country’s struggling economy.
The resolution seeks to ban nearly 90 percent of refined petroleum product exports to North Korea by capping them at 500,000 barrels a year and, in what diplomats said was a last-minute change, demands the repatriation of North Koreans working abroad within 24 months, instead of 12 months as first proposed.
The US-drafted resolution would also cap crude oil supplies to North Korea at 4 million barrels a year. The United States has been calling on China to limit its oil supply to its neighbor and ally.
The resolution passed by a vote of 15 to 0, said Japan’s ambassador to the United Nations. Japan holds the presidency of the Security Council this month.
“It (the resolution) sends the unambiguous message to Pyongyang that further defiance will invite further punishments and isolation,” Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said following the vote.
A spokesperson for North Korea’s foreign ministry called US President Donald Trump’s recently released national security strategy the latest American policy seeking to “stifle our country and turn the entire Korean peninsula” into an outpost of American hegemony.
He said Trump was seeking “total subordination of the whole world”.
Agencies
