The United States has given China a draft resolution for tougher UN sanctions on North Korea and is hoping for a quick vote on it by the UN Security Council, a Western diplomat said on Tuesday. “They’re not there yet.”Details of the draft given to China last week were not immediately available, but the United States is keen to step up global sanctions to pressure North Korea to give up a weapons programme aimed at developing a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the United States. China, which supplies most of North Korea’s oil, has backed successive rounds of UN sanctions but has resisted past US calls to cut off supplies to its neighbour. The United States has also called on the UN Security Council to blacklist 10 ships for circumventing sanctions on North Korea, documents seen by Reuters on Tuesday showed. The documents said vessels had been conducting ship-to-ship transfers of refined petroleum products to North Korean vessels or transporting North Korean coal in violation of existing UN sanctions.

Source: Dhaka Tribune December 20, 2017 02:48 UTC