Six world powers have agreed to a draft UN Security Council statement condemning North Korea’s rocket launch but analysts in Asia said on Sunday its call for tougher sanctions against Pyongyang may be symbolic at best.
Five permanent council members, including the North’s key ally China, and Japan agreed on Saturday to the so-called ”presidential statement” with tough wording as a compromise between inaction and Tokyo’s demand for a legally binding fresh resolution.
China’s decision to sign on to the tough statement indicates Pyongyang will likely shrug off the measure despite its earlier threat to take ”strong steps” if the council acted, mainly because the impact of any sanctions would be limited, analysts said.
”The largest significance of the statement is symbolic at best,” Yoo Ho-yeol, an expert on the North at Korea University in Seoul, said of the draft statement.
”North Korea, if it wants to engage in illegal activities, will do so no matter what,” he said.
”The Security Council condemns the 5 April 2009 launch by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), which is in contravention of Security Council resolution 1718,” the draft statement said, using the North’s official country name.
North Korea said it successfully launched a satellite into space on April 5 but Japan, South Korea and the United States said it was a long-range missile test in disguise and no satellite was orbited.
Pyongyang has warned of taking ”strong steps” if the council takes any action against it.
Adoption expected on Monday
With the backing of the five permanent members and Japan, the statement’s adoption by the full council at a meeting called for Monday afternoon is virtually assured.
Although the statement does not explicitly declare Pyongyang in violation of Resolution 1718, diplomats said the language in the draft saying it contravened the resolution, a compromise acceptable to Beijing, has the same legal meaning.
The Security Council had adopted the resolution in October 2006 calling for financial and arms sanctions against Pyongyang for its nuclear and missile tests that year.
The draft statement agreed on Saturday directs the UN Sanctions Committee to ”undertake its tasks to this effect” and designate ”entities and goods” to face sanctions. It adds that if the committee failed to do so by the end of the month, the council would draw up its own list.
The Sanctions Committee ordered established in 2006 has not met for two years and has not designated a single North Korean company to be added to the UN blacklist of banned entities, diplomats said, rendering the punishment called for by Resolution 1718 all but nonexistent.
A Chinese analyst said the compromise draft statement would be acceptable to Pyongyang as well as to Beijing.
”At the moment, China should be pleased with the format,” said Jin Canrong of Renmin University. ”This means North Korea should be able to accept it as well.”
Jin said the North’s rocket launch was for a domestic audience first and foremost and its goal has been accomplished.
”North Korea’s first goal is domestic. They have already met their first goal, and showed they resisted pressure, so now they can focus on international bargaining.”
Weak sanctions
Japan has unilateral sanctions in place which are also seen as mostly symbolic because the measures have caused scant harm to the North’s already broken-down economy, which has little to export other than arms to what many consider rogue states.
The impact of any UN-backed sanctions is bound to be limited because of the North’s already sharp isolation from the rest of the world and as long as China and South Korea do not fully pull back from exchange with the North, which is unlikely, Korea University’s Ho-yeol said.
China is the North’s largest benefactor and is considered more worried by the impoverished neighbour’s potential collapse than any nuclear or missile capabilities.
South Korea, even under conservative President Lee Myung-bak, is unlikely to pull the plug on an experimental industrial enclave in the North where South Korean firms pay salaries for the complex’s labour directly to the North’s government.
South Korea, while not directly involved in the council’s discussions on fresh censure, cautiously welcomed the agreement as an effective compromise, which one senior Foreign Ministry official in Seoul said sent ”a strong and united message”.
President Lee has said that swift and united action was just as important as the tone of the message to be effective in censuring the North for defying international calls to not escalate tensions with its rocket launch. – Reuters