Team to track N Korea’s violations of sanctionsAFP, SEOULEleven countries, including South Korea, the US and Japan, are launching a new joint mechanism to monitor North Korea sanctions violations, the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The decision follows Russia’s decision to veto the renewal of a panel of UN experts monitoring international sanctions on North Korea in March, effectively ending official oversight of sanctions imposed for the North’s banned nuclear and weapons programs. Russia’s veto was met with great criticism, with the US calling it a “self-interested effort to bury the panel’s reporting on its own collusion” with North Korea. Photo: EPA-EFEAlongside South Korea, the US and Japan, eight other countries — France, the UK, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — are to participate in the multilateral sanctions monitoring team (MSMT). The MSMT would “monitor and report violations and evasions of the sanction measures” of the UN Security Council resolutions, it said.
