The US and its allies on Monday urged the UN Security Council to condemn North Korea’s unlawful ballistic missile launches, but China and Russia blamed the US for escalating tensions with stepped-up military exercises targeting Pyongyang.
At the emergency meeting, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the council that the US would propose a presidential statement saying at a minimum that all 15 members should be agreeable to condemning North Korea’s unprecedented missile launches, to urging Pyongyang to comply with council sanctions resolutions, and “to engage in meaningful dialogue.”
A presidential statement from the council requires the support of all its members, including North Korea’s closest allies, China and Russia.
Photo: AFP
Thomas-Greenfield said that Washington condemns North Korea’s firing of two short-range ballistic missiles on Monday following the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile on Saturday “in the strongest terms” as “flagrant violations” of the council’s ban on the country’s ballistic missile launches.
The launches and North Korea’s threatening rhetoric are undermining international peace and security, Thomas-Greenfield said.
She warned the council that its silence and failure to condemn the North’s missile activities “leads to irrelevance.”
However, Pyongyang’s allies China and Russia said that what is needed now is dialogue between North Korea and the administration of US President Joe Biden, a de-escalation of military exercises, an easing of sanctions on North Korea and approval of a resolution they circulated in November 2021 aimed at resolving the situation on the Korean Peninsula.
That resolution urges the council to end a host of sanctions against North Korea, and calls on the US and North Korea to resume dialogue and consider taking steps to reduce tensions and the risk of military confrontation including by adopting a declaration or peace treaty formally ending the 1950-1953 Korean War.
The war ended with an armistice, leaving the peninsula technically in a state of war.
Chinese Deputy Ambassador to the UN Dai Bing (戴兵) said that joint US-South Korean military exercises “on a higher level and a bigger scale,” the deployment of US strategic assets, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s high-profile visit to Seoul and Tokyo two weeks ago, are “”highly provocative” to North Korea “and aggravate a sense of insecurity.”
“Since the US has repeatedly expressed its willingness to unconditionally engage in dialogue with the DPRK, it should take tangible steps to start and maintain a dialogue,” he said, using an acronym for the North’s official name. “Exclusively pursuing and piling on sanctions will only lead to a dead end.”
Russian Deputy Ambassador to the UN Dmitry Polyansky told the council that North Korea is responding with missile tests to “the unprecedented military maneuvers in the region under the United States umbrella, which are clearly anti-Pyongyang in nature.”
Japanese Ambassador to the UN Kimihiro Ishikane, whose country called the emergency meeting, told the council that Saturday’s missile fell in Japan’s exclusive economic zone just 200km from Hokkaido, where people could see it falling from the sky.
“I assume we can all imagine how terrifying it must have been to see a missile flying to you,” Ishikane said, adding that it endangered vessels and aircraft, and was “an act of intimidation and threatening by force.”
To those who contend that council meetings provoke North Korea “and hence we should remain silent,” he said that remaining silent “will only encourage rule-breakers to write the playbook as they like.”
After the council meeting, Thomas-Greenfield read a statement on behalf of 10 council member states and South Korea surrounded by their ambassadors, that strongly condemned the latest missile launches and urging the other five council nations to join in condemning “the DPRK’s irresponsible behavior.”
The 11 countries — Albania, Ecuador, France, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, South Korea, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, the UK and the US — “remain fully committed to diplomacy and continue to call on the DPRK to return to dialogue, but we will not stay silent as the DPRK advances its unlawful nuclear and missile capabilities, threatening international peace and security,” the statement said.
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