US warns of sanctions on any country trading with DPRK

World
Europe

US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said on Wednesday that if the UN does not put additional sanctions on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) over nuclear tests, he has an executive order ready for President Donald Trump to sign that would impose sanctions on any country that trades with Pyongyang.

“I have an executive order prepared. It’s ready to go to the president. It will authorize me to stop doing trade, and put sanctions on anybody that does trade with (the) DPRK. The president will consider that at the appropriate time once he gives the UN time to act,” Mnuchin told reporters on a flight back to Washington from North Dakota, where Trump gave a speech on tax reform.

US President Donald Trump meets with congressional leadership in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, on September 6, 2017. /AFP Photo

The UN had an emergency council meeting on Monday after DPRK’s sixth nuclear test.

According to AP, the proposed resolution from the US is said to prohibit the DPRK from exporting textiles and ban all countries from hiring and paying workers from the DPRK as these are the two key sources of DPRK’s foreign currency.

China's permanent representative to the UN Liu Jieyi on Monday condemned the latest nuclear test by the DPRK and urged the country to return to the track of dialogue. China will not allow chaos and war on the Korean Peninsula, he said.

The UN Security Council during an emergency meeting over DPRK's latest nuclear test, on September 4, 2017, at UN Headquarters in New York. /AFP Photo

Liu said the suspension-for-suspension proposal and dual-track approach put forward by China together with the Russian proposal of a step-by-step approach is a realistic and feasible roadmap for the settlement of the issue.

The idea of dual approach involves parallel efforts to move forward on both denuclearization and the establishment of a peaceful mechanism on the peninsula. The initiative of suspension-for-suspension calls for the DPRK to suspend its nuclear and missile activities and for the US to suspend their large-scale military exercises.

Source(s): Reuters ,Xinhua News Agency