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The United Nations Security Council in New York -
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US efforts to enforce UN sanctions imposed on North Korea after
its nuclear test in May are gaining growing support from countries
and banks, a senior American official said.
Ambassador Phil Goldberg, the US co-ordinator for implementation of
the UN Security Council resolutions, said efforts to inspect North
Korean vessels for illegal weapons and to curb financial
transactions by Pyongyang entities suspected of proliferation were
winning widespread backing.
"We have found great support among the five parties in the
six-party talks, the UN Security Council, the United Nations more
generally, and regional organizations and fora," he told reporters
in Washington.
Goldberg said the goal of the sanctions was to get North Korea to
give up its nuclear weapons programs as it had pledged in
six-nation talks involving China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and
the United States.
"There is a clear path for North Korea if they want to rejoin that
process. Otherwise, these measures continue, and they continue
until there are those irreversible steps" toward nuclear
disarmament, he said.
Goldberg has visited China, Malaysia, Russia, and the United
Nations to discuss sanctions implementation.
He said he would make a similar trip this month to Singapore,
Thailand, South Korea, Japan and possibly China.
During the visits the United States has presented suspicions about
North Korean financial transactions to governments and to banking
authorities.
"When we visited other countries, they've been very interested in
those advisories. They have sent advisories around to their banks,"
said Goldberg.
"The word is out," he said.
"We think that there is a heightened sense of scrutiny and,
hopefully, transparency," added Goldberg.
On Tuesday the US Treasury Department slapped sanctions on North
Korea's Korea Kwangson Banking Corp for its role in helping three
Pyongyang-linked firms accused of proliferating missiles and
weapons of mass destruction.
The bank would face a freeze of any assets in the United States and
be banned from doing business with US financial institutions, it
said.
North Korea came under a fresh round of UN Security Council
sanctions after it tested a nuclear weapon in May, the isolated
communist state's second test since 2006.
The United States and its allies have been trying since the early 1990s to halt a North Korean nuclear program estimated to have created enough plutonium for as many eight atomic bombs.
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