WASHINGTON, Oct 16: China showed signs on Monday of clamping down on trade across its border with North Korea despite its reluctance over UN sanctions imposed on Pyongyang in response to its apparent nuclear test, a senior US official said.
“We have some indications that the Chinese are also stopping trucks and inspecting them across that 800-mile (1,380-km) border this morning,” Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said on CNN television.
“That’s a sign that China is going to implement the resolution it signed up to,” he said, before adding that Washington and its allies would continue pressing Beijing to honour the US Security Council sanctions resolution adopted on Saturday.
“It would be extraordinary if in this day and age, given the importance of this issue, a leading member of the Security Council, a permanent member like China, did not implement a resolution that it agreed to two days ago,” he said.
“So we will continue to remind the Chinese that that’s their obligation.
Mr Burns provided no further details of the reported Chinese action along the border with North Korea.
“There’s going to be enormous pressure on China to live up to this responsibility; we’re all banking on that,” he said.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will be travelling to Beijing later this week as part of a tour aimed at ensuring the sanctions are applied. Mr Burns said she would be pressing China’s top leaders on the issue.
“Secretary Rice will be in Beijing later this week to discuss this personally with President Hu Jintao and others in the Chinese leadership,” he said.
The UN resolution bans trade with North Korea related to dangerous weapons and the export of heavy conventional weapons, calls for a freeze on financial assets, and imposes a travel ban on those linked to the country’s nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction programmes.
But the most hotly contested measure is a call for inspection of cargo to and from North Korea, aimed at preventing its cash-strapped government from selling material for an atomic bomb to terrorists or rogue states.
Shortly after the UN adopted the measures, though, China’s ambassador to the world body said his government did not favour inspections of cargo going in and out of North Korea.
Mr Burns brushed aside the diplomat’s remarks, suggesting he possibly ‘misspoke’.
“China is going to have to implement this resolution, it was unanimous,” he said.
fence erected: China erected a barbed-wire fence along part of its border with North Korea shortly after the communist country conducted its first nuclear test a week ago, a South Korean newspaper said on Monday.
The aim was to prevent an exodus of refugees from the isolated state, the Hankyoreh quoted a resident as saying.
The fence was constructed on the outskirts of China’s border city of Dandong, a gateway to North Korea, on Wednesday — two days after the North’s announcement.
It was the first time China has erected a barbed-wire fence along the border with its communist neighbour with whom it shares a long land border, the daily added.
The 2.5-metre-high fence stretches about 20kms along the Yalu border river, Hankyoreh said.
The daily quoted an ethnic Korean resident in Dandong as saying that Chinese border guards were mobilised to build the fence, which he said was aimed at stopping North Korean defectors.
“I saw a platoon of Chinese soldiers building the fence on Wednesday,” he was quoted as saying.
In a separate move a Chinese bank in Dandong stopped traders from remitting money to North Korea on Friday, the paper said, adding it was not clear whether the move was temporary or part of punitive action against the North.
China, North Korea’s last major ally, supported the UN Security Council’s vote Saturday to impose sanctions on the North.
The resolution provides for inspection of cargo to and from North Korea, a travel ban on officials working on weapons programs, and a ban targeting missiles, tanks, large artillery systems, warships and combat aircraft.
But China expressed its unwillingness to carry out invasive inspections of cargo vessels. —AFP
