State Department Takes China, Russia ‘At Their Word’ on North Korea Sanctions

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. diplomats will take China and Russia “at their word” on pledges to uphold sanctions against North Korea, State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters Thursday.

In response to a reporter’s question regarding whether recent American sanctions against individuals and companies in those two countries accused of supporting North Korea’s nuclear program might affect negotiations on sanctioning North Korea, Nauert answered optimistically:

Russia and China have pledged to adhere to the sanctions, to adhere to the sanctions against the DPRK, and we trust and look forward that – to them adhering to that. We take them at their word; they said that they would and we don’t have any reason to believe that they wouldn’t now.

Despite the diplomatic response from the State Department, China does not have an impeccable record on its international obligations. For example, despite membership in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), China was instrumental in non-NPT power Pakistan acquiring nuclear weapons in the 1990s.

North Korea sanctions, in particular, have been a major area of Chinese intransigence. In June, a major Chinese bank appeared to be allowing the totalitarian dictatorship of Kim Jong-un to sidestep American financial restrictions.

Nauert told reporters that the new American sanctions would not sideline the negotiations with China because “the companies and the individuals who have been sanctioned – the third-party sanctions – are in China and Russia, but we don’t target any specific governments at all with regard to sanctions.”

North Korea has, for decades, been propped up by China, a relationship left over from the two countries’ pan-communist alliance in the 1950s. Beijing and Pyongyang have often been in disagreement in the intervening time, but the Chinese have been reluctant to punish North Korea’s Kim regime harshly for fear of losing them as a buffer against American power in East Asia.

As a result, China opposed efforts at North Korea sanctions by the previous administration and stood, with Russia, against a similar push at the United Nations this month.

Asked how likely she thought it was China would honor any new sanctions against North Korea that arise from the negotiations, Nauert reiterated her pledge to take them at their word:

China has talked about how it intends to do that. We have to take some of our partners at their word. The situation – and I think many nations want stability in the Korean Peninsula. Many nations understand the threat that the DPRK faces.

She then quoted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s recent statements in Manila, Philippines, on Chinese and Russian contributions to the efforts to rein in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. “I’m hopeful that they can use their influence – and I think they do have influence with the regime – to bring them to a point of dialogue, but with the right expectation of what that dialogue will be,” Tillerson said.