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UNITED NATIONS \u2014 A veto Thursday by Russia ended monitoring of U.N. sanctions against\u00a0North Korea over its nuclear program, prompting Western accusations that Moscow is seeking to avoid scrutiny as it allegedly violates the sanctions to buy weapons from Pyongyang for its war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s turnaround on the U.N. monitoring reflects how Moscow\u2019s growing animosity with the United States and its Western allies since the start of the Ukraine war has made it difficult to reach consensus on even issues where there has been longstanding agreement.<\/p>\n
The veto came during a vote on a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have extended the mandate of a panel of experts monitoring sanctions on North Korea for a year, but which will now halt its operation when its current mandate expires at the end of April.<\/p>\n
The vote in the 15-member council, with 13 in favor, Russia against, and China abstaining, has no impact on the actual sanctions against North Korea, which remain in force.<\/p>\n
Russia had never before tried to block the work of the panel of experts, which had been renewed annually by the U.N. Security Council for 14 years and reflected global opposition to North Korea\u2019s expanding nuclear weapons program.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the council before the vote that Western nations are trying to \u201cstrangle\u201d North Korea and that sanctions are losing their \u201crelevance\u201d and are \u201cdetached from reality\u201d in preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the country.<\/p>\n
He accused the panel of experts of \u201cincreasingly being reduced to playing into the hands of Western approaches, reprinting biased information and analyzing newspaper headlines and poor quality photos.\u201d Therefore, he said, it is \u201cessentially conceding its inability to come up with sober assessments of the status of the sanctions regime.\u201d<\/p>\n
But U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood called the panel\u2019s work essential and accused Russia of attempting to silence its \u201cindependent objective investigations\u201d because it \u201cbegan reporting in the last year on Russia\u2019s blatant violations of the U.N. Security Council resolutions.\u201d<\/p>\n
He warned that Russia\u2019s veto will embolden North Korea to continue jeopardizing global security through development \u201cof long-range ballistic missiles and sanctions evasion efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n
White House national security spokesman John Kirby condemned Russia\u2019s veto as a \u201creckless action\u201d that undermines sanctions imposed on North Korea, while warning against the deepening cooperation between North Korea and Russia, particularly as\u00a0North Korea continues to supply Russia with weapons\u00a0as it wages its war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe international community should resolutely uphold the global nonproliferation regime and support the people of Ukraine as they defend their freedom and independence against Russia\u2019s brutal aggression,\u201d Kirby told reporters.<\/p>\n
Britain\u2019s U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward said Russia\u2019s veto follows arms deals between Russia and North Korea in violation of U.N. sanctions, including \u201cthe transfer of ballistic missiles, which Russia has then used in its illegal invasion of Ukraine since the early part of this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis veto does not demonstrate concern for the North Korean people or the efficacy of sanctions,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is about Russia gaining the freedom to evade and breach sanctions in pursuit of weapons to be used against Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis panel, through its work to expose sanctions non-compliance, was an inconvenience for Russia,\u201d Woodward said.<\/p>\n
France\u2019s U.N. Ambassador Nicolas de Riviere added that \u201cNorth Korea has been providing Russia with military material in support of its aggression against Ukraine, in violation of many resolutions which Russia voted in favor of.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s deputy U.N. ambassador Dmitry Polyansky responded, calling these \u201cunfounded insinuations\u201d that \u201conly strengthened our conviction that we took the right decision to not support the extension of the panel of experts.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Security Council imposed sanctions after North Korea\u2019s first nuclear test explosion in 2006 and tightened them over the years in a total of 10 resolutions seeking \u2014 so far unsuccessfully \u2014 to cut funds and curb its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.<\/p>\n
The last sanctions resolution was adopted by the council in December 2017. China and Russia vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution in May 2022 that would have imposed new sanctions over a spate of intercontinental ballistic missile launches.<\/p>\n
The Security Council established a committee to monitor sanctions and the mandate for its panel of experts to investigate violations had been renewed for 14 years until Thursday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[ad_1] UNITED NATIONS \u2014 A veto Thursday by Russia ended monitoring of U.N. sanctions against\u00a0North Korea over its nuclear program, prompting Western accusations that Moscow is seeking to avoid scrutiny as it allegedly violates the sanctions to buy weapons from Pyongyang for its war in Ukraine. Russia\u2019s turnaround on the U.N. monitoring reflects how Moscow\u2019s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33926"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}