China, Russia veto US bid at UN to punish North Korea

The Security Council resolution put forward by the US would have reduced the amount of oil North Korea could legally import.

The US and South Korea test fire a missile in response to the North Korean launches on Wednesday. Picture: South Korean Defence Ministry/Getty Images

China and Russia overnight Thursday vetoed a US-led bid at the UN to toughen sanctions on North Korea over its missile launches, laying bare divisions Western envoys fear would be exploited by Pyongyang.

The Security Council resolution put forward by the US would have reduced the amount of oil North Korea could legally import as punishment for a test on Wednesday of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

The resolution had the support of the 13 other members of the council, although some US allies quietly wondered whether Washington should have gone ahead with the vote knowing the unflinching opposition from Beijing and Moscow.

China, the closest ally of North Korea, and Russia, whose relations with the West have sunk over its invasion of Ukraine, said they would have preferred a non-binding statement rather than a fresh resolution with teeth against Pyongyang.

The US “should not place one-sided emphasis on the implementation of sanctions alone. It should also work to promote a political solution,” said China’s UN ambassador, Zhang Jun.

He warned sanctions would cause an “escalation” and humanitarian consequences for North Korea, one of the world’s most closed societies, which this month announced a Covid outbreak.

China’s UN ambassador, Zhang Jun, and Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzia at the UN headquarters in March. Picture: AFP

Mr Zhang alleged the US wanted the resolution to fail so as to “spread the flames of war” as part of its wider effort to pressure China. “The crux of the matter,” he said, “is whether they want to use the handling of the Korean peninsula issue on the chessboard of their so-called Indo-Pacific strategy.”

Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzia accused the US of ignoring North Korea’s appeals to stop “hostile activity”. “It seems that our American and other 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.

President Joe Biden’s administration has repeatedly said it is willing to speak with North Korea without preconditions. It has found little interest in working-level talks from North Korea, whose leader Kim Jong-un held three meetings with Mr Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump.

In 2017, before those meetings, the UN Security Council voted unanimously three times to tighten pressure on North Korea, with China and Russia also exasperated by nuclear and ICBM launches. While still offering talks, the US said North Korea had clearly violated a 2017 resolution that called for further consequences if Pyongyang fires another ICBM.

The US and South Korea say the North fired three missiles on Wednesday hours after Mr Biden visited the region. The missile launches – 23 in total this year – pose a “threat to the peace and security of the entire international community”, said US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

Former US president Donald Trump at one of his meetings with North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un. Picture: Saul Loeb/AFP

“Council restraint and silence have not eliminated or even reduced the threat. If anything, DPRK has been emboldened by this council’s inaction,” she said, referring to the North by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. She said the US would pursue unilateral action against North Korea.

British, French and South Korean envoys voiced fear that North Korea would go ahead with a nuclear test, its first since 2017. “Using a veto protects the North Korean regime and gives it carte blanche to launch more weapons,” said French ambassador Nicolas de Riviere.

The US-drafted resolution would have reduced the amount of oil that North Korea can legally import each year for civilian purposes from four million to three million barrels and similarly cut the level of refined petroleum.

One ambassador at the UN said the US went ahead in the last days of its May presidency of the Security Council despite knowing the Chinese and Russian opposition, believing inaction was worse. “Their calculation,” the ambassador said, “was we cannot just allow this constant testing carried out without a reaction.”

AFP