Punishing North Korea with additional sanctions counterproductive and dangerous: Lavrov

August 31st, 2017

Awake Goy

nsnbc : Punishing North Korea with additional sanctions would be “counterproductive and dangerous,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday.

The Russian Foreign Ministry, on its official website, reported that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, discussed North Korea’s latest missile launches as well as the situation in Syria and the Persian Golf (Arab Gulf).

In its statement, the Foreign Ministry noted that the United States and Russia agreed Pyongyang’s missile launch represented another serious violation of UN Security Council resolutions. However, Lavrov reportedly also warned the United States that taking military action against North Korea that could lead to “unpredictable consequences.”

The latest round of U.S. sanctions passed in August would deprive the country of as much as one-third of its $3 billion annual export revenue, by targeting the country’s major industries, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said. China, for its part, warned against any unilateral actions against the People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Critics of the permanent UNSC members (P5) China, France, Russia, UK and USA – without wanting to endorse the regime in North Korea or nuclear energy and weapons anywhere – stress that each of the P5 has its own political, geopolitical, economic and other motives; Motives which have little to nothing to do with the fact that the DPRK uses its right to develop missiles or nuclear weapons. Russia, for its part, would like to see the role of the United States in the region limited, but without allowing China to dominate the region more than it does already.

The last round of sanctions began in 2013 after Kim Jong-un “inherited” the family dynasty’s throne in the “people’s republic”. nsnbc international editor-in-chief Christof Lehmann, in an in depth article entitled “Korea Crisis and Sanctions Designed to Sabotage Transformation of DPRK Economy in 2013″, noted that especially the United States, Russia, and China, began pushing for sanctions as Kim Jong-un planned to implement comprehensive economic reforms.

The article describes in detail what these reforms would have meant for the DPRK, for intra-Korean relations as well as for the United States’, Russia’s and China’s ambitions to impose their respective policies and interests. In his 2013 New Year speech Kim Jong-un announced his plan to turn the DPRK into an economic powerhouse . The plans were based on the Vietnamese rather than on the Chinese model and involved cooperation with German experts. Kim also stressed that Beijing should no longer merely perceive Pyongyang as junior partner who is merely “allowed” to provide rare earth and other commodities to Beijing. (read more in the article below)

CH/L – nsnbc 31.08.2017

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