UPDATE (2 minutes, is that a record?): It appears that the deal has been done, so you can disregard the speculation in the bottom half of the post.
Original Post: After negotiations between the US, China and Russia, the UN Security Council appears to be near a deal:
The U.N. Security Council moved closer Thursday night to agreement on a resolution that would impose an arms embargo and broad financial sanctions on North Korea in response to its claimed nuclear test, according to senior U.S. and European diplomats, The Washington Post reported…
The council’s five major powers —- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France —- and Japan hammered out a compromise text that was to be sent to capitals Thursday night [Note: Friday morning, Korea time] for approval, diplomats said. The preliminary deal was struck after the United States, acting at the request of China, included assurances that the resolution could not be used as a pretext for future military action against North Korea.
The $64,000 question is will the resolution have teeth? That depends on whether it specifically authorizes inspections. That issue is still not decided:
In the previous draft, all countries were authorized to inspect cargo to and from North Korea “as necessary” to ensure compliance with the sanctions and to prevent illicit trafficking. In the new draft, all countries are authorized to take “cooperative action including through inspection of cargo … in particular to prevent illicit trafficking in nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, their means of delivery and related materials.”
Of course, the US and other members of the Proliferation Security Initiative will be able to inspect North Korean ships suspected of carrying nuclear, chemical or biological weapons (or tanks, etc.) with or without an inspections regime specifically spelled as long as the ships were bound for UN member states. So, as long as the ships are not headed to Taiwan or Palestine, they would be open for inspection (and I suspect that Israel is not going to have something to say about any ships going from North Korea to Palistine).
But, in any case, having inspections specifically authorized would eliminate any confusion and show that the UN can actually do something.
Australia is already on board for inspections (Straits of Malacca covered) and, since everyone seems to want to know what Canada thinks, they are on record as supporting the current draft.
10 Comments
Has anything on this peninsula ever been enforceable?
The onus is on China and S.K. (Russia to a lesser extent) to enforce the sanctions since N.K. is their baby, and neither is likely to use force to intercept ships or planes, so that tells you it’s all up to the U.S. and Japan to stop the norks.
Given that China is arguably “the principal supplier of weapons of mass destruction and missile technology to the world” the norks seem like far less of a global menace than people are making them out to be. Maybe the wrong country is being sanctioned.
Quote: http://www.fas.org/spp/starwar.....part01.htm
Does this mean that Japan and the U.S. can search any and every ship coming out of NK now? Wont this totally ruin the North’s drug dealing and counterfit ciggie caper? Will they be able to smuggle their jive through China instead?
What happens if a ship is pulled over and a fight breaks out/people die. Straight of Tonkin time all over again?
Gulf of Tokdo Incident. ;p
Falling far short of a full blown economic sanction, this does nothing.
Thanks to China (backed by South Korea’s Roh Mu Hyun government), and Russia.
I think the world will pay for this inaction, sooner or later, in the name of Iran.
Travolta,
I guess this will probably mean that PSI members can only inspect ships that they suspect may have WMDs or other banned weapons. Of course, as some black drivers in the States can tell you, cops can be pretty liberal when deciding what is suspicious (call it the crime of ’shipping while North Korean’).
I doubt that you will see American ships parked just outside the 12-mile limit, so NK direct retaliation is not practical.
I think we could see is something like: A) NK ship with a booby-trapped load, B) NK ships scuttling while be pursued (something like that happened a few years back), C) armed merchantmen.
Of course, the inspections will be humiliating to the Norks but they are not stupid enough to attack anybody about it.
the best initiative has been the PSI as it is supported by those willing to step up to the plate and join the coalition of countries interested in halting proliferation of such weaponry. UN sanctions are weak at best and hobbled by chinese and russian interests in keeping an unstable dprk in their backyard. most especially, the UN NPT structure has been proven a useless methodology for controlling states from going nuclear. lest we forget it was just such a treaty that gave the dprk the ability to posess plutonium in the first place.
The question: “UN near a NK sanctions deal. Will it be enforcable?”
My humble answer: “Yes. For few months or, at most, a year.” After appearances are kept, China, Russia and SK will find ways out.
And when the Chinese, Russian and SK aid flows back in, Pyongyang will attribute the resulting rise in the standard of living to its own Juche efforts.
Well Mr. Lankov, S.K. is not even waiting a year:
“U.N. resolution on N. Korea irrelevant to inter-Korean businesses: official”
http://english.yonhapnews.co.k.....838E0.html
S.K. has no intention of turning off the tap that supplies KJI’s weapons programs, hardly a surprise though. We’ll hear more pleas from the North this winter for food aid, and wonder where all the Kaesong and Mt. Geumgang revenue went…and again the Roh gov’t will argue both that the funds from these businesses are “insignificant” while at the same time “neccessary” to bolster the North’s economy, an obvious contradiction to anyone but the true believers.