UNITED NATIONS (Dispatches) — China and Russia have vetoed a UN resolution sponsored by the United States that would have imposed tough new sanctions on North Korea for its spate of intercontinental ballistic missile launches.

The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 13-2 and marked a first serious division among the five veto-wielding permanent members of the UN’s most powerful body on a North Korea sanctions resolution.

But China and Russia told the Security Council after the vote that they oppose more sanctions, stressing that what’s needed now is renewed dialogue between North Korea and the United States.

China, the North’s closest ally, and Russia, whose relations with the West have sharply deteriorated over its military operation in Ukraine, said they would have preferred a non-binding statement instead of a fresh resolution against Pyongyang.

The U.S. “should not place one-sided emphasis on the implementation of sanctions alone. It should also work to promote a political solution,” said China’s ambassador to the United Nations, Zhang Jun.

He warned that sanctions would cause an “escalation” and humanitarian consequences for North Korea, which has been recently hit by COVID outbreak.

Zhang also accused the United States of wanting the resolution to fail so as to “spread the flames of war” as part of its wider plan to pressure China.

“The crux of the matter,” he said, “is whether they want to use the handling of the Korean peninsula issue on the chessboard of their so-called Indo-Pacific strategy.”

Meanwhile, Russia’s ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said Washington is ignoring Pyongyang’s appeals to stop “hostile activity.”

“It seems that our American and other Western colleagues are suffering from the equivalent of writer’s block. They seem to have no response to crisis situations other than introducing new sanctions,” he said.

He went on to say that new sanctions against North Korea are “a path to a dead end.”

“We have stressed the ineffectiveness and the inhumanity of further strengthening the sanctions pressure on Pyongyang.”

During the past 16 years, the UN Security Council has steadily, and unanimously, ramped up sanctions to cut off funding for North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.

 

Security Council Split Spells End Era for U.S.-Led Sanctions

 

A decision by China and Russia to veto new United Nations sanctions on North Korea pushed by the United States shattered any veneer of global cooperation, straining efforts to pressure Pyongyang as it prepares to conduct a new nuclear test.

U.S. officials slammed it as a “sharp departure from the Council’s track record of collective action on this issue.”

“Today’s vote means North Korea will feel more free to take further escalatory actions,” Jeffrey Prescott, deputy to the U.S. Ambassador to the UN , said on Twitter. “But we can’t resign ourselves to this fate – that would be far too dangerous.”

Russia’s UN ambassador called the resolution “a path to a dead end,” while China’s envoy said it would only lead to more “negative effects and escalation of confrontation.”

Analysts and some diplomats said Washington may have miscalculated in its rush to impose consequences for North Korea’s missile tests.

“I think it was a big mistake for the U.S. to push for what was sure to fail rather than showing unified opposition to North Korea’s actions,” said Jenny Town, director of the U.S.-based 38 North program, which monitors North Korea. “In the current political environment, the idea that China and Russia could agree with the U.S. on anything would have sent a strong signal to Pyongyang.”