China and Russia called for an easing of sanctions against North Korea at the United Nations Security Council on Thursday, a rejection of the U.S. plan to convince Kim Jong Un to surrender his nuclear weapons.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began the meeting by calling for continued enforcement of the sanctions until North Korea “makes good on its commitment to final, fully verified denuclearization.” His Chinese and Russian counterparts rejected that call and said North Korea should receive preliminary economic relief, despite Western fears that the regime will pocket those concessions and then break its denuclearization promises.
“There is a provision in the Security Council resolutions that the council is prepared to modify the sanctions measures in light of the DPRK’s compliance,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Thursday through a U.N. translator, using the formal acronym for the Kim regime. “China believes that the Security Council needs to consider invoking in due course this provision to encourage the DPRK and other relevant parties to move denuclearization further ahead.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov put it more bluntly. “Negotiations are a two-way street,” he said. “Steps by the DPRK toward gradual disarmament should be followed by easing of sanctions.”
Those calls go against the international consensus often cited by President Trump’s team, which has worked since he took office to intensify the sanctions pressure on North Korea. Trump’s strategy toward North Korea has relied on the belief that only economic pressure and the credible threat of military force would convince Kim to dismantle his nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program in exchange for economic support. By that logic, premature sanctions relief would only strengthen the regime’s hand.
“We must not forget what’s brought us this far: the historic international pressure campaign that this council has made possible through the sanctions that it imposed,” Pompeo reminded the diplomats at the outset of Thursday’s Security Council meeting. “Until the final denuclearization of the DPRK is achieved and fully verified, it is our solemn collective responsibility to fully implement all U.N. Security Council resolutions pertaining to North Korea.”
The public split follows months of closed-door disputes about whether China and Russia have thrown North Korea economic lifelines. The Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on multiple Chinese and Russian entities engaged in illicit economic activity with North Korea, while Ambassador Nikki Haley has rebuked both countries for continuing to sell oil to the regime. Last week, U.S. allies agreed to enhance maritime surveillance of North Korean oil smuggling operations — “ship-to-ship transfers” of petroleum products to North Korean tankers on the high seas.
“The United States has deployed aircraft and surface vessels to detect and disrupt these activities,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Saturday.
Lavrov criticized such enforcement efforts. “It seems inappropriate and not timely when our western partners have imposed a course towards tightening the sanctions regime against the DPRK, given that Pyongyang has taken important steps toward denuclearization,” he said through a UN translator.
