TOKYO
(AP) — North Korea says it will make the United States pay a heavy
price if a proposal Washington is backing to impose the toughest
sanctions ever on Pyongyang is approved by the U.N. Security Council
this week.
The
North's Foreign Ministry issued a statement early Monday saying it is
watching the United States' moves closely and threatened it is "ready
and willing" to respond with measures of its own.
The United States has called for a vote Monday, New York time, on new U.N. sanctions against North Korea.
Last
Tuesday, the U.S. circulated a draft resolution proposing the
toughest-ever U.N. sanctions on North Korea, including a ban on all oil
and natural gas exports to the country and a freeze on all foreign
financial assets of the government and its leader, Kim Jong Un.
Security
Council diplomats, who weren't authorized to speak publicly because
talks have been private, said the U.S. and China were still negotiating
the text late Sunday.
Previous
U.N. sanctions resolutions have been negotiated between the United
States and China, and have taken weeks or months. But the Trump
administration is demanding a vote in six days.
"The
U.S. is trying to use the DPRK's legitimate self-defensive measures as
an excuse to strangle and completely suffocate it," the statement said,
using the acronym for North Korea's formal name. "Since the U.S. is
revealing its nature as a blood-thirsty beast obsessed with the wild
dream of reversing the DPRK's development of the state nuclear force
which has already reached the completion phase, there is no way that the
DPRK is going to wait and let the U.S. feast on it."
North
Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test a week ago and has been
launching ballistic missiles at a record pace. Both are violations of
U.N. resolutions, but Pyongyang claims it must carry them out to build
nuclear deterrent against what it sees as U.S. aggression.
Undaunted
by the international criticism of its test, which Pyongyang says was of
a hydrogen bomb, Pyongyang celebrated through the weekend, with
concerts and banquets for the country's nuclear scientists and
engineers.
Blocking
textile exports and cutting off the flow of oil from China would
potentially be crippling measures. North Korea gets nearly all of its
oil supply from China, with a much smaller amount coming from Russia or
the open market.
According
to a recent study by the Nautilus Institute think tank, a massive
cutback in the flow of oil from China would definitely hurt the North
Korean economy, and especially average citizens. But the report said the
impact would likely be blunted on the military, which probably has
enough fuel stockpiled to continue normal operations for the immediate
future.
Russian
President Vladimir Putin recently expressed doubt over whether
sanctions are an effective means of getting the North to stop its
missile and nuclear testing, and China, harboring similar concerns, has
repeatedly hesitated in the past to fully support U.S. sanction plans.
German
Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday also stressed the importance of
diplomacy and offered to act as a facilitator if needed.
"If
our participation in talks is wanted, I will say yes immediately," she
said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung
newspaper that was published Sunday.
The
five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany
conducted long-running talks with Iran that led to a 2015 deal for
international sanctions to be lifted in exchange for Tehran curbing its
nuclear activities.
"I could also imagine such a format to settle the North Korea conflict," she said
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