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Japan announces new sanctions against N.Korea
2006-10-11
Japan announced new sanctions against North Korea on Wednesday over its reported underground nuclear blast, while the reclusive communist state held out the threat of more tests. The North's KCNA news agency, renowned for blustering anti-U.S. rhetoric, said pressure from Washington to rein in its nuclear program would be tantamount to a declaration of war. Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki said new sanctions, underpinning those imposed after Pyongyang test-fired missiles in July, included barring all North Korean ships from Japanese ports and banning imports. The decision by the National Security Council would be approved by cabinet on Friday. "The country whose security is most affected by these actions by North Korea is Japan," Shiozaki told a news conference. "Considering the gravity for our country, we made this decision based on a comprehensive judgment." Tokyo has also been pressing for U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang, and the Security Council is likely to make a decision by Friday. A broad consensus appears to be building but some reservations have been expressed by China and Russia, North Korea's largest trading partners. In the capital of North Korea, a tightly-regimented communist country with 1.2 million-strong army, the country's No. 2 leader said whether Pyongyang conducted more tests depended on Washington. "The issue of future nuclear tests is linked to U.S. policy toward our country," Kyodo news agency quoted Kim Yong-nam as saying in a meeting with a Kyodo delegation. "If the United States continues to take a hostile attitude and apply pressure on us in various forms, we will have no choice but to take physical steps to deal with that," he added. Pyongyang's KCNA news agency was characteristically dramatic in its portrayal of the situation. "If the U.S. increases pressure upon the DPRK (North Korea), persistently doing harm to it, it will continue to take physical countermeasures, considering it as a declaration of a war," it quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying. But it added that North Korea was ready for both dialogue and confrontation. Ignoring U.N. warnings, North Korea, a country entirely in the sway of Kim Jong-il, vaunted as the "Dear Leader," said on Monday it had conducted its first nuclear test. A "threat of nuclear war and sanctions" had forced its hand. There were fears, later discounted, that Pyongyang might conduct another test on Wednesday. NHK started the day saying that Tokyo was checking reports of a second blast in North Korea, but the reports were never substantiated. SMALL EXPLOSION Experts have been unable so far to confirm that the earth tremor detected on Monday was indeed a nuclear test. U.S. envoy Thomas Schieffer said they might never be able to do so. "Because the yield was so small, we may not be able to make a real determination at all," Schieffer told Japanese executives. In September, Japan approved new financial sanctions effectively freezing remittances and the transfer of funds from Japan by groups suspected of links to Pyongyang programs for developing missiles and weapons of mass destruction. But economists said the effect on North Korea of banning trade would be more symbolic than real unless Pyongyang's key trading partners such as China and Russia joined in. Japanese imports include coal and matsutake mushrooms, while North Korea imports limited numbers of cars, trucks and buses. China and Russia, which both border North Korea, met other veto-holding members of the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday to discuss a range of sanctions proposed by the United States and Japan to pressure Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program. "I think that there has to be some punitive actions," said Beijing's U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya. "We need to have a firm, constructive, appropriate but prudent response." Russia called Monday's reported test a "colossal blow" to the non-proliferation regime but, like China, insisted any U.N. resolution should not leave the way open for the use of force. The United States, France and Britain, the three other permanent Council members, agreed that tough measures were needed quickly. Diplomats hoped a resolution could be adopted by Friday on an array of weapons-related and financial sanctions. Human Rights Watch urged that emergency food aid to the impoverished North be continued, however, saying millions of ordinary citizens could be at risk of hunger and starvation. (Additional reporting by Lindsay Beck in Beijing, Jon Herskovitz in Seoul, Linda Sieg and Isabel Reynolds in Tokyo, and Canberra bureau) Muzi.com News
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