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	UN Announces More Sanctions Against North Korea

New York Times

July 21, 2010

SEOUL, South Korea — The Obama administration announced Wednesday that it would impose further economic sanctions against North Korea, throwing legal weight behind a choreographed show of pressure on the North that included an unusual joint visit to the demilitarized zone by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

The measures, announced here by Mrs. Clinton after talks with South Korean officials, focus on counterfeiting, money laundering and other dealings that she said the North Korean government used to generate hard currency to pay off cronies and cling to power.

While the United States already places heavy sanctions on North Korea, American officials insisted that the new measures would further tighten the financial vise around the secretive and isolated North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, who, according to regional intelligence, is in declining health.

The unilateral American action came two months after a South Korean-led investigation found North Korea responsible for the March sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean warship, which killed 46 sailors. The North’s bellicose behavior, analysts say, reflects a deepening power struggle inside the country. But the United States has struggled to build consensus about how harshly to confront the Kim government.

While the United Nations Security Council voted to condemn the sinking of the warship, it did not name North Korea as the culprit because of resistance from China, the North’s neighbor and most important ally.

Mrs. Clinton demanded that the North take responsibility for the attack, saying it would continue to be a pariah until it did so. She ruled out any negotiations with the North Korean government until it agreed to relinquish its nuclear weapons. And she said that the United States would expand and stiffen its sanctions to “target their leadership, target their assets.”

“These measures are not directed at the people of North Korea, who have suffered for too long due to the misguided and maligned priorities of their government,” Mrs. Clinton said at a news conference, flanked by Mr. Gates and South Korea’s defense and foreign ministers. “They are directed at the destabilizing, illicit and provocative policies pursued by that government.”

Her announcement punctuated a visit rich in symbols of American diplomacy and military might, organized to mark the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War. On Tuesday, the United States and South Korea confirmed that they would stage large-scale military exercises in the seas off Japan and the Korean Peninsula, as a show of deterrence against the North.

Then, on Wednesday, Mr. Gates and Mrs. Clinton traveled to Panmunjom, in the demilitarized zone, where they clambered up an observation post in a gloomy drizzle to peer into the North. Later, as the pair toured a small building that straddles the military demarcation line between North and South, a North Korean soldier stared at them through a window.

Neither acknowledged the soldier. Afterward, the two stood before a phalanx of cameras, under the gaze of guards from the North Korean side, to proclaim solidarity with South Korea.

“It is stunning how little has changed up there and yet how much South Korea continues to grow and prosper,” Mr. Gates said, noting that this was his third visit to the demilitarized zone — the first being in the early 1990s when he was director of central intelligence.

It was Mrs. Clinton’s first visit. “Although it may be a thin line,” she said, referring to the narrow strip of land separating the two sides, “these two places are worlds apart.”

Mrs. Clinton is heading to a regional security meeting in Vietnam on Thursday, where she is likely to face more reluctance to point fingers at North Korea over the Cheonan. On Tuesday, the meeting’s sponsor, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, issued an opening statement that said it “deplored” the sinking but did not name the aggressor.

The administration’s show of solidarity with South Korea has complicated ties with China. In addition to its balkiness at the United Nations, Beijing has objected to the joint naval exercises, which have frayed an already tense relationship between the militaries of China and the United States and also prompted a rebuke from North Korea on Thursday. Earlier this year, Beijing brusquely canceled a planned visit by Mr. Gates.

“I remain open to rebuilding and strengthening military-to-military dialogue between the United States and China,” Mr. Gates said. But he added, “We are obviously concerned by some of the things China has said, some of the things China is doing in the military arena; they are worrying.”

Administration officials would not give specifics on the planned North Korean sanctions, but said they would mainly build on those already put in place by the Treasury Department or enshrined in the latest Security Council resolution against North Korea.

Mrs. Clinton said the United States would designate North Korean companies and individuals involved in weapons proliferation and other illicit activity. As an example, American officials cited trade in counterfeit cigarettes. The sanctions would also focus on liquor, exotic foods and other luxury goods, which the government in Pyongyang uses in a vast system of patronage. And they will take aim at North Korean officials who use diplomatic privilege to cloak their dealings.

Mrs. Clinton said she would send her adviser on nonproliferation and arms control, Robert J. Einhorn, in coming days to discuss the sanctions with countries in Asia. Because no legitimate American banks do business with the North, the effectiveness of the measures will depend heavily on persuading banks in other countries to shun North Korea.

Given the North’s profound isolation, some analysts question how much more damage sanctions can do.

The strategy of aiming sanctions at the country’s elite is similar to the latest United Nations sanctions against Iran. A previous effort to punish politically connected North Koreans, by freezing assets in a Macao-based bank, Banco Delta Asia, where many of them had accounts, was quite successful, analysts said.

But the Bush administration later agreed to have the Macao government unblock those accounts in an effort to lure North Korea back to negotiations over its nuclear program — a quid pro quo that ultimately led nowhere. The Obama administration insists that it will not cut such deals with the North to restart talks.

“They made commitments over the last years to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, which they have reneged on,” Mrs. Clinton said. “They just refuse to actually do it.”

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