WASHINGTON, Oct 14: Enforcing sanctions on North Korea voted by the UN Security Council on Saturday could be highly risky, especially the high-seas interdiction of North Korean vessels, experts said.
The United States is positioned to step up inspections of North Korean ships in international waters if it decides to aggressively enforce the sanctions against Pyongyang which were unanimously backed by the Security Council.
But analysts question how forcefully Washington can act without splintering a fragile political consensus with key countries like China and South Korea, or without inviting a military reaction by North Korea.
“I think the North Koreans would shoot back,” said John Pike, director of Global Security.Org, a research group that specializes in national security and military affairs.
“I just don’t have the sense that there is any degree of assurance that they wouldn’t get into a shooting match,” he said.
The council resolution stops well short of authorizing military action against North Korea for defying the international community with the nuclear test Pyongyang announced that it carried out on Oct 9.
But the resolution slaps an embargo on sales or transfers in or out of North Korea of a range of items that could be used in its missile, nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction program.
Pushed by the United States but the product of a compromise, the resolution also bans the sale or transfer to North Korea of major weapons systems — from armor to warships, combat aircraft and missiles.
It calls on all member states to take “cooperative action including through inspection of cargo to and from the DPRK, as necessary, ... thereby to prevent illicit trafficking in nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, their means of delivery and related materials.”
For the United States, which sees proliferation of missiles and nuclear material as the main threat posed by North Korea, containment is its last line of defense now that Pyongyang appears to have tested a nuclear weapon.
Since May 2003, it has been quietly building an international network to track and monitor North Korean ships and aircraft, and to intercept suspect shipments.
The biggest known coup of the so-called Proliferation Security Initiative came just months later when a Libyan-bound German cargo ship, the BBC China, was intercepted in the Mediterranean.
It was diverted to Italy where a search uncovered parts for gas centrifuges from a supplier in Malaysia who was part of a smuggling network run by Abdul Qader Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb.
“It was that event that I think moved the Libyans to make the strategic decision to give up their weapons of mass destruction, and ... it was that PSI-related event that ultimately led to the unraveling of the Kahn network,” Ambassador Robert Joseph, under secretary of state for international security, told reporters last year.
More than a dozen interdictions are reported to have been carried out under the aegis of PSI, many of them involving shipments of suspect materials to Iran. But officials have been secretive about the results.—AFP
WASHINGTON, Oct 14: Enforcing sanctions on North Korea voted by the UN Security Council on Saturday could be highly risky, especially the high-seas interdiction of North Korean vessels, experts said.
