Rejected with thirteen votes in favor, two against and zero abstentions
MADRID, 27 May. (EUROPA PRESS) –
China and Russia on Thursday vetoed a resolution proposed by the United States at the UN Security Council to impose additional restrictive measures on North Korea due to escalating tensions over recent missile launches.
“Shameful that China and Russia have vetoed the UN Security Council resolution to respond to North Korea’s continued ballistic missile tests,” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said on her official Twitter profile.
During the session, the French ambassador to the UN, Nicolas de Rivière, argued that “continuing to do nothing will pose a great risk to regional stability and to the international non-proliferation architecture”.
In this way, he stressed that “France has spared no effort to ensure that the Security Council speaks with one voice” and has insisted that “North Korea cannot be allowed to continue developing its nuclear and ballistic programs with impunity” .
For his part, the Chinese ambassador to the UN, Zhang Jun, maintained, after the vote, that China’s veto is a “prudent decision”, since “dialogue and negotiation” is the only way to solve the problem. . Thus, he has emphasized the responsibility of the United States and its “inability to break the agreements” to achieve peace.
“The starting point of this draft resolution that Russia and China proposed was aimed at alleviating the difficulties that North Korea is facing and giving a new impetus to the political process. Imposing additional sanctions not only does not solve the problem, but it aggravates it “, he has defended.
In this way, he has insisted that “it is contradictory” to impose sanctions that have a negative effect on the country’s population and “to be claiming to give humanitarian aid.” “China does not endorse this way of working,” she said, adding that the Cold War mentality must be “abandoned.”
The Russian ambassador to the UN, Vasili Nebenzia, has underlined, for his part, that “the presentation of new sanctions” is “a dead end”, since they have an “inhuman character” due, moreover, to the effects of the pandemic.
“The epidemiological situation is difficult and it seems irresponsible to us to impose sanctions now, when the North Koreans are facing a challenge that should lead us to propose the opposite: to offer help to the country,” Nebenzia said.
Finally, he specified that “disarmament cannot be expected” in the face of the “threat” of new sanctions. “We have heard threats against Pyongyang during President Joe Biden’s visit to the region,” she said, noting that the “preventive diplomacy” that “many states say they defend” is paralyzed.
Nebenzia has thus said that sanctions are the “most extreme” actions, since “they lead to very serious collateral effects”. “Russia is against any military activity that threatens the security of the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia,” she said.
In the reply turn, the US ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said that “North Korea continues to intend to advance its ballistic and weapons of mass destruction program”, with the launch of missiles.
“This is a clear and present danger to the whole world. Thirteen of us have supported this resolution because it was the right thing to do,” he stressed, adding that “the Council’s inaction” emboldens Pyongyang.
The United States has stressed that “it still wants to negotiate” and has urged China and Russia to dialogue. “The only thing that has changed is the refusal of the members of the Council,” she pointed out, so her veto does not contribute to the “credibility” of the body.