China and Russia on Thursday vetoed in the UN Security Council a United States resolution imposing new sanctions on North Korea to punish its ballistic missile fire, vividly displaying the division of the body. at the risk of benefiting Pyongyang.
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The 13 other members of the Council for their part voted in favor of the text, which provided in particular for a reduction in imports of crude and refined oil by Pyongyang.
Behind the scenes, several Washington allies bemoaned his insistence on holding a vote knowing that China and Russia would use their vetoes. For the Americans, “it was worse to do nothing”, “worse than the scenario of two countries blocking the resolution”, explains an ambassador on condition of anonymity.
The firing of ballistic missiles, including intercontinental ones, is “a threat to peace and security for the entire international community”, underlined before the vote the American ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
His Chinese counterpart, Zhang Jun, felt that the American approach “drove the Council away from dialogue and conciliation”. Before the vote, he affirmed Beijing’s “total” disagreement “to any attempt to make (…) Asia a battlefield or to create clashes or tensions there”.
Zhang Jun called on the United States to “work to promote a political solution”, stressing that further sanctions would have humanitarian consequences in North Korea, which recently admitted Covid cases to the country.
Russia’s UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia has accused the United States of ignoring Pyongyang’s calls to end its “hostile activities” and engage in dialogue. “It seems our American and Western colleagues are suffering from the equivalent of writer’s block. They seem to have no response to crisis situations other than introducing new sanctions,” he said.
The American draft resolution also planned to ban North Korean exports of mineral fuels, watches and clocks, and any sale or transfer to Pyongyang of tobacco. The text also aimed to increase the fight against Pyongyang’s cyber activities.
After the rejection of this project and a clear display of the division of the UN Security Council on the North Korean file, this body may find it difficult to maintain the pressure to apply the sanctions decided for the last time. in 2017, diplomats fear.
At the time, responding to nuclear and ballistic missile tests, the Council showed its unity by three times adopting economic sanctions against North Korea in the fields of oil, coal, iron, fishing or textiles.
If North Korea has developed its ballistic armament and has several atomic bombs, it has not yet succeeded, according to diplomats, in combining the two technologies in order to have a missile with a nuclear head.
It fired new missiles this week, including probably its largest intercontinental ballistic missile, shortly after a visit to Asia by US President Joe Biden.
Washington and Seoul have also warned that Pyongyang could soon conduct a seventh nuclear test, which would be its first in five years.
In recent months, the North Korean regime has accelerated its missile tests, blaming what has been described as a “hostile” attitude by the United States. Already in March, an intercontinental ballistic missile had been tested for the first time since 2017.
Talks with Pyongyang have stalled since a failed summit in 2019 between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and then-US President Donald Trump. The North Korean regime has ignored all the offers of dialogue made by Washington, which has said that since last year it has been open to dialogue.