China set to implement North Korea UN sanctions

BEIJING: Beijing will “seriously” implement new United Nations sanctions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear and missile programmes, it said, with the measures set to hit Pyongyang’s lucrative Chinese coal exports hard.

UN Security Council Resolution 2321, passed on Wednesday, caps the North’s annual coal exports at little more than four months of current sales to China, Chinese government data showed.

Spearheaded by the United States, the response to the hermit state’s latest nuclear test in September was approved 15-0 after extended negotiations.

It limits North Korea’s coal exports next year to 7.5 million tonnes or just over US$400mil (RM1.7mil), down 62% from 2015.

The cap represents a fraction of the North’s current annual exports to China, the isolated country’s sole ally and its main provider of trade and aid.

China imported 1.8 million tonnes of coal worth US$101mil (RM450mil) from North Korea in October alone, according to the most recent figures available on the Chinese Customs website. The volume was up nearly 40% year on year.

Beijing will “seriously” implement the resolution, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters at a regular briefing yesterday.

China, a veto-wielding permanent Security Council member, had a “responsible attitude”, he added, and had always implemented UNSC resolutions and fulfilled “its international obligations according to the UN charter”.

Trade with the world’s second largest economy is crucial for the isolated and impoverished North, which has suffered regular food shortages and an outright famine in the mid-1990s.

The North’s coal exports to the Asian giant have continued despite previous UN sanctions, which included exemptions allowing trade to go on for “livelihood” purposes, but did not set criteria for the determination. — AFP