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chris_J2
Joined: 17 Apr 2006
Location: From Brisbane, Au.
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 Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2009 4:50 pm Post subject: UN Resolution |
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Highlights of North Korea Resolution
By The Associated Press � 1 hour ago
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A look at some key points in the U.N. Security Council resolution imposing new sanctions on North Korea for its second nuclear test in defiance of an earlier ban.
The resolution:
_ "Condemns in the strongest terms" North Korea's second nuclear test on May 25 "in violation and flagrant disregard of its relevant resolutions."
_ Demands that North Korea "not conduct any further nuclear test or any launch using ballistic missile technology."
_ Orders North Korea to suspend all activities related to its ballistic missile program and re-establish a moratorium on missile launches.
_ Demands that North Korea immediately retract its withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and return "at an early date" to the International Atomic Energy Agency's nuclear safeguards regime.
_ Orders North Korea to "abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner."
_ Calls on North Korea "to return immediately to the six-party talks without precondition."
_ Bans North Korea from exporting all arms and weapons-related material and providing technical training, advice, services or financial assistance related to such arms and material.
_ Bans countries from selling or supplying arms and weapons-related material to North Korea except for small arms and light weapons, and orders states to notify the U.N. committee monitoring sanctions at least five days before any transfer.
_ Calls on all states to inspect, consistent with national and international law, all cargo to and from North Korea at their airports, seaports and on land if the state has "information that provides reasonable grounds to believe the cargo contains" banned items.
_ Calls on all states to inspect vessels on the high seas, with consent of the country whose flag the vessel is flying, if there are reasonable grounds to believe the cargo contains banned items.
_ Orders member states to prohibit the supply of bunkering services such as providing fuel or supplies to North Korean vessels if there are reasonable grounds to believe they are carrying banned items. |
Source:The Associated Press
Additional info on financial sanctions here:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d1a36b68-5734-11de-8c47-00144feabdc0.html |
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chris_J2
Joined: 17 Apr 2006
Location: From Brisbane, Au.
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| Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 5:09 am Post subject: |
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And the predictable response from North Korea:
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Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 13, 2009; 8:10 AM
TOKYO, June 13 -- North Korea declared Saturday that it could no longer "even think about giving up its nuclear weapons" following the U.N. Security Council's imposition of sanctions for its second nuclear test.
Declaring that it would meet sanctions with "retaliation," the government of Kim Jong Il vowed to "weaponize" all the plutonium it could extract from used fuel rods at its partially disabled Yongbyon nuclear plant.
It also pledged to start enriching uranium to make more nuclear weapons. For the past seven years, North Korea has adamantly denied U.S. intelligence reports that it even had a uranium-enrichment program.
"It makes no difference to North Korea whether its nuclear status is recognized or not," the government said in a statement by its official news agency. "It has become an absolutely impossible option for North Korea to even think about giving up its nuclear weapons."
The 15-member Security Council unanimously passed a resolution Friday that imposes broad financial, trade and military sanctions on North Korea, while also calling on states, for the first time, to seize banned weapons and technology from the North that are found aboard ships on the high seas.
North Korea seemed Saturday to have interpreted the seizure resolution as a "blockade." But at the insistence of China and Russia, the North's traditional allies, the resolution does not authorize the use of military action to enforce any seizure that a North Korean vessel might resist, nor does it restrict shipments of food or other nonmilitary goods.
"An attempted blockade of any kind by the United States and its followers will be regarded as an act of war and met with a decisive military response," North Korea said.
The bellicose language in Saturday's statement -- which describes the Security Council action as "another ugly product of American-led international pressure" -- is similar in tone to previous North Korean responses to U.N. sanctions.
But the North's announcement that it would process enriched uranium to make more weapons was an extraordinary public admission of active involvement in a program whose existence has been denied by Pyongyang since 2002, when it was first mentioned in a U.S. intelligence report.
The Bush administration accused North Korea in 2002 of secretly continuing with nuclear weapons development in violation of a 1994 agreement. It then canceled construction of two light-water reactors in the North that were to have been used to produce electricity for the impoverished country.
Uranium enrichment, which offers a different route for making nuclear weapons than plutonium, uses centrifuges to spin hot uranium gas into weapons-grade fuel.
Insisting that it had no uranium-enrichment program, the North Korean government took an American diplomat to a missile factory in 2007, where there were aluminum tubes that some experts had said could be used in uranium enrichment. North Korea allowed the diplomat to take home some samples.
Traces of enriched uranium were unexpectedly discovered on those samples. Other traces were also found on the pages of reactor records that North Korea turned over to the United States in 2008, as part of now-aborted negotiations on denuclearizing the North.
In recent years, U.S. officials have suggested that while North Korea has tried to enrich uranium, it has not been very successful.
North Korea on Saturday said it has indeed made progress.
"Enough success has been made in developing uranium enrichment technology to provide nuclear fuel to allow the experimental procedure," the government said. "The process of uranium enrichment will be commenced."
This may have been bluster, at least in the short term.
It will take many years for North Korea to develop the uranium route to a bomb, according to Siegfried S. Hecker, a periodic visitor to North Korea's nuclear complex in Yongbyon who is a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and current co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation.
Writing last month in Foreign Policy magazine, Hecker said that Pyongyang lacks uranium centrifuge materials, technology and know-how.
He warned, however, that Iran has mastered this technology and that it could help the North move forward with uranium enrichment. North Korea and Iran have shared long-range missile technology that may provide both countries with the ability to deliver a nuclear warhead.
North Korea also said Saturday that the spent fuel rods at its Yongbyon reactor are being reprocessed, with all the resulting plutonium to be used in nuclear weapons. The government said Saturday it has reprocessed more than a third of them.
Hecker said in a recent interview that there is enough plutonium in the spent rods for "one or two more" nuclear tests. He also said it would take the North about six months to restart its Yongbyon plant, and that it could then produce enough plutonium to make about one nuclear bomb a year for the next decade.
Early this year, North Korean officials said that technicians have used all the plutonium previously manufactured at Yongbyon to make nuclear weapons. Hecker said that was probably enough for between 6 and 8 bombs.
In South Korea on Saturday, several analysts said North Korea's fist-shaking response to Security Council sanctions suggests that hard-liners in the country's military are exercising increasing power in running the government.
Kim Jong Il suffered a stroke last summer and has appeared thin and frail in public appearances. He is believed to have chosen his youngest son, Jong Un, as his future successor.
It is unknown, however, how far the succession process has progressed inside the secretive communist state.
"Given Kim's ailing health, which is complicated by the problem of smooth power transfer to his son, the North Korean leader is likely to have yielded to the demands and pressure of military people who have little awareness of the outside world," said Koh Yu-whan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul.
Special correspondent Stella Kim in Seoul contributed to this report. |
Source: Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/13/AR2009061300636.html?hpid=topnews |
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NAVFC
Joined: 10 May 2006
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| Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 2:09 pm Post subject: |
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and again these sanctions are a waste. Why? Because they arent made mandatory in the resolution, so like before most countries will ignore them and NK knows it.
Furthermore the part about inspecting ships and aircraft? not mandatory. The US has already stated it will not forcibly board any North Korean vessels, but will ask for permission to inspect, if permission is refused, theyll ask the ship to divert to a near port for inspection - and then - and this is where it gets funny - if it refuses to be diverted.. they willsimply publish the name of the ship and what is was thought to be carrying! OOOHH the North Koreans must be shaking in their boots! Imagine the sheer terror as the UN publicly annunces that a NK ship may have been carrying weapons!
Please.. these sanctions are a joke, have no teeth, and are only really out of diplomatic obligation by the nations involved. Now china and russia can say they "did" something. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 6:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Entire world, just letting it happen. Hope it doesn't come back to bite them. |
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NAVFC
Joined: 10 May 2006
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| Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 7:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Entire world, just letting it happen. Hope it doesn't come back to bite them. |
It will as it always does. The entire world knows these sanctions dont mean crap. They have no teeth, are non binding. The world is just going through the motions, to make it sem like the UN has authorities.
Loook at Iran. 3 sets of UN sanctions on them, and they still basiclly told then UN where they can stick it. and the UN hasnt done anything. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 7:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Would KJI really ever order his underlings to nuke their kin to the south, and would they obey? I think I'd rather be executed than responsible for the deaths of millions of my countrymen. |
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Newsa
Joined: 11 Jun 2009
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 7:46 pm Post subject: |
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The problem is that that UN resolutions aren't exactly international law, so much as guidelines, even if the language is harsh.
It's true that sanctions usually lack bite. But North Korea, who often does shady deals with shady governments, might just suffer a fair bit from it. I'm not entirely sure there isn't some genuine fear there when they call sanctions an "act of war". |
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Julius
Joined: 27 Jul 2006
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| Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 9:18 pm Post subject: |
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| NAVFC wrote: |
| The entire world knows these sanctions dont mean crap. They have no teeth, are non binding. The world is just going through the motions, to make it sem like the UN has authorities. |
The world has been left with no choice but to assign the whole NK problem to China to take care of. They're doing a pretty poor job of it, but still the US cannot afford to step in and rectify the situation. And China isn't going to lift a finger no matter what happens. They have more pressing priorities. |
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NAVFC
Joined: 10 May 2006
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| Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 10:27 pm Post subject: |
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| bacasper wrote: |
| Would KJI really ever order his underlings to nuke their kin to the south, and would they obey? I think I'd rather be executed than responsible for the deaths of millions of my countrymen. |
Umm.. you do recall the North invaded South Korea in 1950?
and that in 1999 and 2002 attacked and caused the death of many south korean sailors in naval battles? If you think that
"the north koreans would never attack the south because they are korean too" then your mentality is way off. |
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NAVFC
Joined: 10 May 2006
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| Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 11:10 pm Post subject: |
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| Julius wrote: |
| NAVFC wrote: |
| The entire world knows these sanctions dont mean crap. They have no teeth, are non binding. The world is just going through the motions, to make it sem like the UN has authorities. |
The world has been left with no choice but to assign the whole NK problem to China to take care of. They're doing a pretty poor job of it, but still the US cannot afford to step in and rectify the situation. And China isn't going to lift a finger no matter what happens. They have more pressing priorities. |
well what changed between 1994 and now, in terms of NK? Clinton was ready and came close to going to war with North Korea over nukes. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 8:35 am Post subject: |
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| NAVFC wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| Would KJI really ever order his underlings to nuke their kin to the south, and would they obey? I think I'd rather be executed than responsible for the deaths of millions of my countrymen. |
Umm.. you do recall the North invaded South Korea in 1950?
and that in 1999 and 2002 attacked and caused the death of many south korean sailors in naval battles? If you think that
"the north koreans would never attack the south because they are korean too" then your mentality is way off. |
As I teach my students, the most important thing in getting the correct answer is to read the question carefully. I didn't ask about conventional attack, but nuking. |
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NAVFC
Joined: 10 May 2006
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| Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 9:06 am Post subject: |
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| bacasper wrote: |
| NAVFC wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| Would KJI really ever order his underlings to nuke their kin to the south, and would they obey? I think I'd rather be executed than responsible for the deaths of millions of my countrymen. |
Umm.. you do recall the North invaded South Korea in 1950?
and that in 1999 and 2002 attacked and caused the death of many south korean sailors in naval battles? If you think that
"the north koreans would never attack the south because they are korean too" then your mentality is way off. |
As I teach my students, the most important thing in getting the correct answer is to read the question carefully. I didn't ask about conventional attack, but nuking. |
yeah but you added the qualifier "responsible for the death of a million of my countrymen"
well over a million people died during the Korean war. |
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