North Korea calls new sanctions monitoring team ‘unlawful’

SEOUL: North Korea´s top diplomat on Sunday criticised a new sanctions monitoring team led by the United States as “unlawful and illegitimate”, warning countries involved in the entity would face a “dear price”.

The 11-member team was named earlier this month after Russia in March vetoed the renewal of a panel of UN experts monitoring international sanctions on North Korea, imposed for its banned nuclear and weapons programmes.

Since the Russian veto, South Korea and its allies have worked to apply different methods to monitor sanctions, leading to the formation of the new group -- which includes the United States and Japan.

Such a monitoring mechanism is “utterly unlawful and illegitimate”, North Korea´s Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency on Sunday.

“Its existence itself constitutes a denial of the UN Charter,” he said.

The criticism comes on the heels of a report by the South´s spy agency that North Korea had sent a “large-scale” troop deployment to support Moscow´s war in Ukraine, with 1,500 special forces already training in Russia.

Seoul also claims that Pyongyang has been shipping arms to Moscow to use against Kyiv.

Choe did not address the alledged deployment in the Sunday statement, while Pyongyang has previously denied any sanctions-busting weapons trade with Russia.--AFPTensions on the Korean peninsula have intensified in recent years with North Korea stepping up its development of a series of ballistic missiles and a nuclear arsenal, drawing international sanctions, and forming a close military relations with Russia. Washington has been strengthening its security cooperation with key regional allies South Korea and Japan.

“The forces involved in the smear campaign against the DPRK will have to pay a dear price for it,” Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui said via state news agency KCNA, using the country’s official name.