Armed with extraordinary new UN sanctions, nations raced Monday to ensure that North Korea’s biggest trading partners actually carry them out, an elusive task that has undercut past attempts to strong-arm Pyongyang into abandoning its nuclear weapons.
North Korea reacted angrily, vowing to bolster its arsenal and mount revenge against the US. In a reprise of the North’s frequent, bellicose broadsides against the US, Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said Washington alone was to blame for the crisis and added his country was ready to “teach the US a severe lesson” with its nuclear force.
“We will under no circumstances put the nukes and ballistic rockets on the negotiating table,” Ri said in a speech to an Asia regional gathering in the Philippines.
As the US President Donald Trump demanded full and speedy implementation of the new penalties, his top diplomat laid out a narrow path for the North to return to negotiations that could ultimately see sanctions lifted. Stop testing missiles for an “extended period,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, and the US might deem North Korea ready to talk.
“We’ll know it when we see it,” Tillerson said. “This is not a ‘give me 30 days and we are ready to talk.’ It’s not quite that simple. So it is all about how we see their attitude towards approaching a dialogue with us.”
United stance
Tillerson, who held separate talks in Manila with Yi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, also sought to emphasise a united stance against the North.
"It's quite clear in terms of there being no daylight between the international community as to the expectation that North Korea will take steps to achieve all of my objectives, which is a denuclearised Korean peninsula," he said.
Wang then followed up by warning North Korea that China, which is Pyongyang's biggest trading partner, would be resolute in implementing the sanctions.
"China will for sure implement that new resolution 100%, fully and strictly," Wang told reporters, according to a translator.
US President Donald Trump had on Sunday said on Twitter that he "appreciates" Russia and China's cooperation in backing the sanctions. Either of them could have blocked the measures with their UN veto.
