North Korea |
The United
States said on Wednesday that it hopes to work with China to halt North Korea’s
nuclear program, but warned that if this fails it might resort to sanctions.
In an
address to State Department staff, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke of
“third country sanctions,” warning that Chinese companies may be hit for
working with Pyongyang.
Tillerson
said China has reaffirmed support for a “denuclearized” Korean peninsula but
that Washington would test their commitment to helping rein in their neighbour
by “leaning into them hard”.
He said
Washington would urge world powers to fully implement UN Security Council
sanctions against Kim Jong-Un’s regime “because no one has ever fully
implemented those.”
And he
warned: “We are going to lean into people to fully implement them. We tell
them: ‘We are watching what you are doing’.
“When we see
you are not implementing, we see companies or we see individuals that are
violating sanctions we are going to contact you, we are going to ask you to
take care of it,” he said.
“If you
can’t take care of or you simply don’t want to care of it for own internal
political reasons we will. We’ll sanction them through third country
sanctions.”
China
approved UN sanctions targeting North Korea’s nuclear program, but American
observers believe Chinese banks are continuing to give Pyongyang access to
international finance.
(AFP)
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