WASHINGTON: The United States is set to confront Russia at the United Nations Security Council over violating North Korean arms restrictions.
Deputy US Ambassador Robert Wood said that Washington will push for China’s view on growing relations between Moscow and Pyongyang.
The meeting of the 15-member council comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin visited North Korea last week to sign an agreement with Kim Jong Un in which they agreed to provide military assistance if any of them faces armed aggression.
“This should be of great concern to the entire global community,” Wood told Reuters ahead of the meeting, accusing Russia of “in essence siding with a rogue state to violate countless UN Security Council resolutions.”
He said that the US also wants to see what China has to say about this growing military collaboration between DPRK and Russia. “They cannot view this as a positive development,” he noted.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs earlier said that the summit was a bilateral exchange between Russia and North Korea.
Formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), North Korea has been under UN embargos since 2006 for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
But over the past year, the United States has repeatedly blamed North Korea for sending arms to Russia to use in its war against Ukraine. However, both Moscow and Pyongyang have denied the allegations.
The UN sanctions monitors told a Security Council committee, in a report that the debris from a missile that fell in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on January 2 was a North Korean Hwasong-11 ballistic missile.
Secretary-General of the UN Antonio Guterres last week said that Russia must abide by UN sanctions on North Korea.
Richard Gowan, UN director at the International Crisis Group has stated that Russia is dead-set on breaking up the sanctions regime and China has not done much to stop.
Manhole Wood accused Russia of firing dozens of North Korean trajectories at Ukraine, terming the war as a training ground for Pyongyang.
Last week US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said Russia had fired four possible North Korean-supplied ballistic missiles toward Ukraine.
