China, Russia oppose additional sanctions on Pyongyang: reports


The U.N. Security Council was set to issue a presidential statement in Washington D.C. on Monday to condemn North Korea’s rocket launch and discourage further provocations, a South Korean government official said in Seoul.

The presidential statement was expected to condemn the launch, reiterate that it violated U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874 and demand that the North not conduct any further launches.

News reports from Washington said that since China and Russia, permanent members of the Security Council, opposed imposing additional sanctions on Pyongyang, Security Council members did not seek additional sanctions in response to the rocket launch.

The result of the Security Council’s meeting came just four days after it convened, quicker than expected. In the past, it generally has taken seven to 10 days for the U.N. Security Council to announce the result of a meeting.

The Security Council met on Friday, immediately after the early-morning launch of the Unha-3 long-rage rocket, which broke apart and fell into the West Sea 1-2 minutes after launch. Pyongyang surprisingly admitted its failure through state-run news media on the same day.

The presidential statement’s rhetoric is stronger than the 2009 U.N. Security Council’s presidential statement which condemned the North’s missile launch in April 2009, the official said on condition of anonymity.

“The South Korean Foreign Minister (Kim Sung-hwan) had consultations with the U.S., Japan, China, the U.K. and France through phone calls. Especially, we had good coordination with the U.S.,” the official said.

“The presidential statement seems to be coming out much faster than previously thought, and its rhetoric much stronger than expected,” he said. “China has been quite cooperative.”

Although China fell short of explicitly saying the North violated U.N. Security Council resolution 1874, the North’s major ally did not oppose a brief press statement made by the U.N. Security Council on Friday. The statement said that members of the Security Council “deplored” the launch and that it violated the U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1718 and 1874.

South Korea initially hoped that the Security Council would adopt a resolution, a stronger message than a presidential statement, but its purported stance was that the content was more important than the form, the official said.

By Kim Yoon-mi (yoonmi@heraldcorp.com)