U.S. pushes U.N. to cut N.Korea oil imports, ban tobacco, blacklist Lazarus hackers

By Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The US is pushing the U.N. Safety Council to additional sanction North Korea over its renewed ballistic missile launches by banning tobacco and halving oil exports to the nation and blacklisting the Lazarus hacking group, in line with a draft decision reviewed by Reuters on Wednesday.
The US circulated the draft to the 15 council members this week. It was not instantly clear if or when it may very well be put to a vote. A decision wants 9 “sure” votes and no vetoes by Russia, China, France, Britain or the US.
Russia and China have already signaled opposition to strengthening sanctions in response to Pyongyang’s launch final month of an intercontinental ballistic missile – it is first since 2017.
U.S. particular envoy on North Korea, Sung Kim, advised reporters final week that the US had mentioned the draft U.N. textual content with China and Russia, however “sadly, I can’t report that we now have had productive discussions with them to date.”
U.S. and South Korean officers and analysts have additionally mentioned there are growing indicators that North Korea may additionally quickly check a nuclear weapon for the primary time since 2017.
The U.S.-drafted U.N. decision would prolong a ban on ballistic missile launches to incorporate cruise missiles or “some other supply system able to delivering nuclear weapons.”
It might halve crude oil exports to North Korea to 2 million barrels yearly and halve refined petroleum exports to 250,000 barrels. It additionally seeks to ban North Korean exports of “mineral fuels, mineral oils and merchandise of their distillation.”
North Korean chief Kim Jong Un is called a sequence smoker – steadily seen with a cigarette in hand in pictures in state media – and the draft decision would ban exports to North Korea of tobacco and manufactured tobacco.
North Korea has been subjected to U.N. sanctions since 2006, which the U.N. Safety Council has steadily – and unanimously – stepped up through the years in a bid to chop off funding for Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile applications.
LAZURUS HACKERS
The council final tightened sanctions on Pyongyang in 2017, however since then Beijing and Moscow have pushed for an for an easing of the measures on humanitarian grounds.
The US and allies say Kim is in charge for the humanitarian state of affairs, accusing him of diverting cash to nuclear weapons and missile applications as a substitute of spending it on the North Korean individuals.
The hermit Asian state has efficiently evaded some U.N. sanctions and continued creating its applications, in line with unbiased U.N. sanctions displays, who reported in February that North Korean cyberattacks on cryptocurrency exchanges have been incomes Pyongyang a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}.
The draft decision would impose an asset freeze on the Lazarus hacking group, which the US says is managed by the Reconnaissance Basic Bureau, North Korea’s main intelligence bureau.
The Lazarus group has been accused of involvement within the “WannaCry” ransomware assaults, hacking of worldwide banks and buyer accounts, and the 2014 cyber-attacks on Sony Photos Leisure.
The draft decision would additionally ban anybody from “procuring or facilitating the procurement of knowledge and communication know-how -related companies” from North Korea.
When requested concerning the U.S. push final week, China’s U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun mentioned: “We don’t assume that extra sanctions can be useful in easing the stress, it’d even make the state of affairs worse.”
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; modifying by Richard Pullin)