Tag Archives: United Nations

U.N. urged to prepare North Korea case for alleged crimes against humanity

The North Korea flag flutters next to concertina wire at the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia March 9, 2017. REUTERS/Edgar Su

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – A veteran investigator urged the United Nations on Thursday to appoint an international legal expert to prepare judicial proceedings against North Korea’s leadership for documented crimes against humanity.

His call came amid an international furor over the murder of Kim Jong Nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and critic of his rule, in Malaysia last month.

A U.N. commission of inquiry, in a 2014 report issued after it conducted interviews and public hearings with defectors, cataloged massive violations in North Korea – including large prison camps, starvation and executions – that it said should be brought to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Marzuki Darusman, a former Indonesian attorney-general who served on the U.N. commission of inquiry on North Korea, said the U.N. Human Rights Council must pursue North Korean accountability during its current session.

“There is a need for the Human Rights Council to appoint an independent special expert to oversee the judicial prosecutorial process which will lead up to an eventual mechanism of accountability,” Marzuki told a panel held on the sidelines of the Geneva forum.

The landmark 2014 report, rejected by Pyongyang, said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un might be personally responsible for crimes against humanity.

Evidence recorded over the past decade or more by U.N. investigators should be given to a new U.N. mechanism for prosecution, he said, adding: “Let us prevail in the end-game.”

Experts hope an ad hoc tribunal on North Korea may be set up someday, as China would be expected to veto any move in the U.N. Security Council to refer its ally to the ICC.

The “assassination” of Kim Jong Nam ought to be a “wake-up call”, Lee Jung-Hoon, South Korean ambassador for North Korean human rights, told the event.

“That is why I think this assassination is such a game-changer because a general audience is seeing for the first time live what kind of regime we are really dealing with,” Lee said.

“If North Korea is able to do this to the older brother of Kim, to the uncle of Kim (Jang Song Thaek executed in 2013), and all the elite purging left and right, can you imagine what life might be like if you are a prisoner in a North Korean prison camp, with over 100,000 of them?” he said.

Australian Justice Michael Kirby, who chaired the 2014 inquiry, said witness statements would be used once a tribunal and prosecutor were appointed. “Accountability is the name of the game in human rights, otherwise it’s all rhetoric.”

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Mark Heinrich)

U.N. head: drought-stricken Somalia needs help to avoid famine

U.N. Secretary general Antonio Guterres addresses a news conference after his meeting with Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed (L) in Somalia's capital Mogadishu March 7, 2017 REUTERS/Feisal Omar

By Katharine Houreld

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Rich countries must do more to stop drought-stricken Somalia from sinking into famine, the head of the United Nations said on Tuesday, warning terrorism would increase without aid.

“If you want to fight terrorism, we need to address the root causes of terrorism. We need to bring peace and stability to a country like Somalia … It’s the best way for rich countries to protect themselves,” U.N. chief Antonio Guterres told a news conference in Mogadishu.

The United Nations is asking for $825 million to provide aid to 6.2 million Somalis, about half the country’s population.

“I am not appealing for the generosity of the rich, I am appealing for the enlightened self-interest of the rich,” said Guterres.

His appeal comes a day after U.S. President Donald Trump signed a revised executive order suspending travel to the United States from six mainly Muslim nations, including Somalia. Trump, who has justified that measure on national security grounds, has also said he will slash budgets for U.S. aid and diplomacy.

Those policies will hit Somalia hard, after more than 25 years of civil war and an ongoing battle between its U.N.-backed government and an Islamist insurgency.

The current drought is threatening to turn into famine, with at least 360,000 Somali children severely malnourished, meaning they need extra food to survive.

“If we don’t have rain in the coming two months this could be a humanitarian crisis that could be the same as we had in 2011, when we lost 260,000 people,” said Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed.

Families from rural areas are moving to cities to search for food as animals die and water sources evaporate, forcing many to drink water infected with deadly cholera bacteria.

Asha Mohamed, 18, brought her two young daughters to the capital after the family’s sheep and goats died.

“When we got food, first we fed the children. We would only eat afterwards if there was enough,” she said.

Her neighbor, Medina Mohamed, said she must divide her food to ensure her smallest children and disabled son are fed first.

“The others don’t understand,” she said. “Everyone wants to eat.”

Low rainfall in neighboring Kenya has also left 1.3 million people in need of food aid there, while severe drought prompted water restrictions in South Africa at the end of last year and North Africa faced its worst drought in decades.

(Reporting by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Julia Glover)

Syrian government says agenda agreed, seeks united opposition at next Geneva talks

Syrian Ambassador to the U.N. Bashar al Ja'afari, Head of the Syrian government delegation addresses the media after a meeting of Intra-Syria peace talks with United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura at Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, February 25, 2017. REUTERS/Pierre Albouy

By Yara Abi Nader and Issam Abdallah

GENEVA (Reuters) – Syria’s chief negotiator said on Saturday that the “only thing” achieved at 10-day talks in Geneva was an agreed agenda and that the government wanted a unified opposition delegation as its negotiating partner.

In his first remarks since talks ended on Friday, Syria’s ambassador to the U.N. Bashar al-Ja’afari said the agenda agreed through U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura gave equal weight to four subjects, including the government’s own priority of fighting terrorism.

“Nothing has been adopted so far, there is nothing final at all except for the agreement on an agenda. This is the only final thing that we achieved in this round,” Ja’afari told reporters in Geneva.

Damascus sought a unified Syrian opposition, “not a Saudi partner nor a Qatari, Turkish or French partner”. “What is asked is to have a partner,” he said.

The main Syrian opposition at the talks is the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) but there are also two smaller dissident groups which have no military muscle but enjoy Moscow’s blessing as opposition voices.

Ja’afari said a “first condition” was to have a Syrian national opposition that did not seek help from Israel nor Turkey, and “does not work according to Qatari, Saudi, Jordanian, Israeli intelligence agendas”.

The second condition was to have a unified opposition that agreed on a common agenda, he said.

Ja’afari said the government was studying whether to return for the next round of Geneva talks later in March. De Mistura says he plans to continue separate talks with the two sides on substantive issues after reporting to the U.N. Security Council next week.

Syria’s first U.N.-led peace talks in almost a year ended on Friday without breakthrough but de Mistura said the warring parties now had a clear agenda to pursue a political solution to the country’s six-year-long conflict.

“The train is ready, is in the station, is warming up its engine, everything is ready and it just needs an accelerator,” de Mistura told reporters on Friday night. “And the accelerator is in the hands of those who were attending this round.”

(Reporting by Yara Abi Nader; Writing by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by John Irish and Catherine Evans)

Syria talks may surprise by meeting the low bar of expectations

General view at the start of a meeting between UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, 2nd R, and Syrian government delegation during Syria peace talks in Geneva, Switzerland February 28, 2017. REUTERS/Xu Jinquan/Pool

By Tom Miles, John Irish and Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – No breakthrough was promised at Syria peace talks in Geneva, and no breakthrough has occurred. But as the first U.N.-led talks in almost a year neared their end on Friday, neither side has walked away and both claim small wins.

Russia, seen as holding the balance of power, has met both sides behind the scenes, and Western diplomats expect the talks to conclude later on Friday with an “agreed agenda” and a plan for a return to the Swiss city later this month.

In eight days of talks, the warring sides have not negotiated face-to-face, but haggled over the agenda with U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura, who wants to discuss a new constitution, elections and reformed governance.

As the text was still being finalised, the opposition met de Mistura to ensure the process would focus squarely on “political transition”, Western diplomats said.

Syrian government negotiator Bashar al-Ja’afari wants “counter-terrorism” to be included on the agenda.

“There is movement from both sides. The difficulty is that the opposition wants to be sure how the question of terrorism will be dealt with and in what order,” one diplomat said.

“They need language that ensures the process is not hijacked by the government to distract from political transition. De Mistura has to ensure that both sides don’t feel trapped.”

The scope of the negotiation is much narrower than a year ago, when de Mistura also had to hear demands for a ceasefire and release of prisoners. A shaky ceasefire has been in place since December and separate talks in Kazakhstan, sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran, are dealing with military matters.

Past peace efforts have failed, often as a fractured opposition succumbed to pressure from events on the battlefield, having failed to penetrate Ja’afari’s steely intransigence.

The latest round rode out the fallout from a militant attack on two security offices in the city of Homs last Saturday that killed dozens and which de Mistura said was a deliberate attempt to derail the talks.

FINAL SPRINT

A Western diplomat said agreement was near but it was the “final sprint and it can still derail”.

“I think the regime would do anything to get out of it as long as they can blame the other side like they tried yesterday (Thursday),” he said.

Russian diplomats met representatives of Syrian armed groups late on Thursday, diplomats and opposition sources said, the second contact in days between Moscow and the opposition, whom Assad’s government regards as terrorists.

Despite those contacts, Russia accused the main opposition of trying to sabotage the talks by refusing to unite with two smaller dissident groups which have no military muscle but have Moscow’s blessing as opposition voices.

Jihad Makdissi, head of the dissident “Cairo group” at the talks, said he met de Mistura on Friday. He said he expected an agreement on the agenda, format and date for a next round of talks, but that the U.N. envoy would clarify later.

Creating a unified opposition delegation is seen as the key to holding face-to-face talks. But a second Western diplomat said Russia’s push to unify the opposition was an underhand tactic.

“Russia is trying to do that to destabilize the talks. They insist on the opposition becoming one. This is a tactic to weaken the process. I hope that Staffan can push back on it.

A new round of Astana talks is due on March 14, and Russian officials have said the Geneva negotiations could resume on March 20.

(Editing by Richard Lough)

U.N. says tide of refugees from South Sudan rising fast

An aerial photograph showing South Sudanese refugees at Bidi Bidi refugeeís resettlement camp near the border with South Sudan, in Yumbe district, northern Uganda December 7, 2016. REUTERS/James Akena/File Photo

By Elias Biryabarema

KAMPALA (Reuters) – Some 1.5 million refugees have fled fighting and famine in South Sudan to neighboring countries, half of them to Uganda, and thousands more are leaving daily, the U.N. refugee agency said on Thursday.

Political rivalry between South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar ignited a civil war in 2013 that has often followed ethnic lines.

The two signed a shaky peace deal in 2015, but fighting has continued and Machar fled in July after days of clashes between soldiers loyal to him and Kiir’s forces in the capital Juba. He is now in South Africa.

Charlie Yaxley, spokesman for the UNHCR in Uganda, said the agency estimated the total number of South Sudanese who have gone to neighboring countries at 1.5 million, half in Uganda.

In December there were an estimated 600,000 South Sudanese who had arrived in Uganda.

Yaxley said there were thousands of new arrivals every day. The UNHCR had planned for 300,000 this year.

“We have already in the first two months of this year received 120,00 new arrivals. If this rate of inflow continues actually that figure for 2017 will be far higher,” Yaxley said.

Refugees arriving in Uganda often say they are fleeing from ethnic violence.

“I was in Invepi … and almost every refugee I spoke to had either seen a friend or family member killed in front of their eyes,” Yaxley said, referring to the latest refugee settlement set up in Uganda.

Violence has prevented many farmers from harvesting crops and the scarcity of food has been compounded by hyperinflation, triggering famine in parts of South Sudan.

The UNHCR says the refugee crisis is the world’s third largest after Syria’s and Afghanistan’s.

(Editing by George Obulutsa and Andrew Roche)

Syria air force bombed convoy, U.N. says in Aleppo probe

Members of the civil defense rescue children after what activists said was an air strike by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in al-Shaar neighborhood of Aleppo. REUTERS/Sultan Kitaz

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA(Reuters) – Syrian government aircraft deliberately bombed and strafed a humanitarian convoy, killing 14 aid workers and halting relief operations, U.N. investigators said on Wednesday in a report identifying war crimes committed by both sides in Syria’s war.

Syrian and Russian forces conducted daily air strikes on rebel-held eastern Aleppo between July and its fall on December 22, killing hundreds and destroying hospitals, they said.

Orphanages, schools and homes were “all but obliterated”, panel chairman Paulo Pinheiro told a news conference.

Opposition groups shelled government-controlled western Aleppo, killing and injuring dozens, the report said. They prevented civilians from fleeing besieged eastern Aleppo, using them as human shields – a war crime.

“The scale of what happened in Aleppo is unprecedented in the Syrian conflict. Much of Aleppo, once Syria’s biggest city and its commercial and culture center and a UNESCO World Heritage site, has been reduced to rubble,” Pinheiro said.

He called for ensuring that “those responsible for this ruinous situation one day are brought to justice”.

His team was ready to share its confidential list of suspected war criminals on all sides with a new U.N. body on Syria being set up in Geneva to prepare criminal prosecutions.

“It cannot pass without having this step toward justice, because of the great numbers of victims,” panel member Carla del Ponte said.

“What we have seen here in Syria, I never saw that in Rwanda, or in former Yugoslavia, in the Balkans. It is really a big tragedy,” she added. “Unfortunately we have no tribunal.”

SATELLITE IMAGERY

Cluster munitions were “pervasively used” and air-dropped into densely populated areas, the report said, amounting to the war crime of indiscriminate attacks.

“We have established very clearly in the report that the Syrian air force is responsible for these attacks, we don’t have any evidence linking Russia to those attacks with forbidden chemical weapons,” Pinheiro said.

The investigators also did not attribute any specific war crime investigated to Russian forces but Pinheiro said they would to assign responsibility “if and when we can prove it”.

The U.N. Commission of Inquiry’s report – released as Syrian peace talks continue in Geneva – covers the July-December period and is based on 291 interviews with victims and witnesses, as well as analysis of forensic evidence and satellite imagery.

Syrian helicopters unleashed toxic chlorine bombs “throughout 2016” on Aleppo, a weapon that caused hundreds of civilian casualties there, it said.

At least 5,000 pro-government forces had encircled eastern Aleppo in a “surrender or starve” tactic. Thousands of civilians had to leave the city under an evacuation agreement between the warring parties that amounted to the war crime of forced displacements, it said.

“This represents – and we have said this in the past – a worrying pattern that has occurred in other areas of the country including Deraa and Moadamiya,” Pinheiro said.

The investigators accused the Syrian government of a “meticulously planned and ruthlessly carried out” air strike on a U.N. and Syrian Red Crescent convoy at Orum al-Kubra, in rural western Aleppo on Sept. 19 that killed 14 aid workers.

At the time, the Syrian army and Russia denied responsibility for the attack. A previous U.N. inquiry had been unable to determine who conducted the strike.

“By using air-delivered munitions with the knowledge that humanitarian workers were operating in the location, Syrian forces committed the war crimes of deliberately attacking humanitarian relief personnel, denial of humanitarian aid, and attacking civilians,” the report said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alison Williams and Dominic Evans)

U.S. seeks end to U.N. rights council’s ‘obsession’ with Israel

Israeli policemen remove a pro-settlement activist during an operation by Israeli forces to evict residents from several homes in the Israeli settlement of Ofra, in the occupied West Bank, February 28, 2017. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is reviewing its participation in the U.N. Human Rights Council, seeking reform of its agenda and an end to its “obsession with Israel”, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday.

Washington has long argued that the Geneva forum unfairly focuses on Israel’s alleged violations of human rights, including war crimes against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The United States “remains deeply troubled by the Council’s consistent unfair and unbalanced focus on one democratic country, Israel”, Erin Barclay, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, told the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Barclay said that no other nation had a whole agenda item devoted to it and that “this obsession with Israel” threatened the council’s credibility.

Barclay questioned whether focusing on Israel was a sensible priority, adding that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government was bombing hospitals while North Korea and Iran deny millions of their people of freedoms of religion, peaceful assembly and expression.

“In order for this Council to have any credibility, let alone success, it must move away from its unbalanced and unproductive positions,” Barclay said.

“As we consider our future engagements, my government will be considering the Council’s actions with an eye toward reform to more fully achieve the Council’s mission to protect and promote human rights.”

The United States is currently an elected member of the 47-state Geneva forum where its three-year term ends in 2019.

There was no immediate reaction from the U.N. human rights office, but on Tuesday Council spokesman Rolando Gomez told a briefing: “The US been a very active and constructive partner in the Council for many years, spearheading a number of important initiatives, such as DPRK (North Korea), Iran, Syria, LGBT rights … and many issues that are certainly on the agenda today.”

He said that any country that wished to revoke its membership of the council would have to go through the General Assembly in New York.

(Additional reporting by Tom Miles; editing by Richard Lough)

U.N. urges aid access to Yemen ports to avert looming famine

A woman sits with her children near their tent at a camp for internally displaced people in Dharawan, near the capital Sanaa, Yemen February 28, 2017. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

DUBAI (Reuters) – A United Nations aid official visiting both sides in Yemen’s civil war has urged them to guarantee more access to the country’s ports to let food, fuel and medicine imports in to ward off a looming famine.

Emergency relief coordinator Stephen O’Brien said the U.N. was urging international donors to step up their aid but the Yemenis had to ensure it could reach up to seven million people now facing severe food shortages.

Yemen has been divided by nearly two years of civil war that pits the Iran-allied Houthi group against a Western-backed coalition led by Saudi Arabia.

Nearly 3.3 million people in Yemen – including 2.1 million children – are acutely malnourished, the U.N. says. They include 460,000 children under age of five with the worst form of malnutrition, who risk dying of pneumonia or diarrhea.

Fighting in or near ports hampers access for aid coming from outside.

“The international community needs to step up its funding and the parties to the conflict need to continue providing humanitarian access,” O’Brien told reporters at the government’s base in Aden late on Monday.

“This also means access to the ports so that the needed imports can enter Yemen,” he said.

Earlier this month, the U.N. said Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the Yemeni port of Hodeidah, which serves territory controlled by the Houthis, had hampered humanitarian operations to import vital food and fuel supplies.

Five cranes at the port have been destroyed, forcing dozens of ships to lie offshore because they cannot be unloaded.

“Seven million people don’t know where their next meal is coming from and we now face a serious risk of famine,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien has also met with the Houthi movement in the capital Sanaa. On Tuesday, he was planning to visit the flashpoint city of Taiz but his convoy returned from its gates because of security concerns, a U.N. source told Reuters.

Robert Mardini, regional director at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), voiced concern at the fate of 500,000 people in the port city of Hodeidah as the conflict moves north up the Red Sea coast.

The “lifeline” of aid moving through Hodeidah and other ports is starting to be cut, Mardini told reporters in Geneva. “In terms of reserves, there are reserves for two, three or four months, I don’t know. But there is an urgent need for re-supply, this is what we can say.”

U.N. has appealed for $2.1 billion to provide food and other life-saving aid, saying that Yemen’s economy and institutions are collapsing and its infrastructure has been devastated.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said last week only $90 million of funding has been received so far, out of $5.6 billion needed this year for humanitarian operations in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen.

(Reporting by Aziz El Yaakoubi, additionnal reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

South Korea suggests North’s suspension from U.N. over airport killing

Yun Byung-se, Minister of Foreign Affairs of South Korea, addresses the Conference on Disarmament at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland February 28, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

By Stephanie Nebehay and Joseph Sipalan

GENEVA/KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – South Korea called for “collective measures” to punish North Korea for using chemical weapons to kill the estranged half-brother of its leader Kim Jong Un, as Malaysia said on Tuesday it would charge two women with murder over the airport attack.

Police have said the women smeared VX nerve agent, a chemical on a United Nations list of banned weapons of mass destruction, on Kim Jong Nam’s face in an assault captured on security cameras in the Malaysian capital’s airport on Feb. 13.

Speaking at the U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva on Tuesday, South Korea’s Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se said the use of chemical weapons was a “wake-up call” and the international community should act – including possibly suspending the isolated North’s seat at the United Nations.

North Korea has rejected allegations of its involvement in the killing of Kim Jong Nam, but U.S. and South Korean officials believe he was the victim of an assassination orchestrated by Pyongyang.

“Many international media pointed out that North Korea’s use of chemical weapons for the targeted killing in a third country sent a very clear message to the world,” South Korea’s Yun told the Geneva forum.

“Namely this impulsive, unpredictable, trigger-happy and brutal regime is ready and willing to strike anyone, anytime, anywhere.”

North Korea’s delegation at the conference told Reuters it would respond to Yun’s speech later on Tuesday.

Malaysian police arrested a Vietnamese woman, Doan Thi Huong, and an Indonesian, Siti Aishah, in the days after the attack.

Police are also holding one North Korean man and have identified seven other North Koreans wanted in connection with a case that reads like the plot to a spy movie.

Both women will be formally charged on Wednesday under section 302 of the penal code, which carries the death penalty, Malaysia’s attorney general, Mohamed Apandi Ali, confirmed to Reuters in a text message.

DEADLY NERVE AGENT

VX is one of the deadliest chemical weapons ever created, far more potent than Sarin, the gas used in deadly chemical attacks in Syria in 2013 and in an attack on the Tokyo subway by a Japanese doomsday cult in 1995.

“Just a few grams of VX is sufficient for mass killing,” Yun said.

“North Korea is reported to have not just grams but thousands of tonnes of chemical weapons, including VX, all over the country … The recent assassination is a wake-up call to all of us to North Korea’s chemical weapons capability and its intent to actually use them.”

North Korea has previously denied possessing chemical weapons.

States could invoke the Chemical Weapons Convention as the use of such agents was in “flagrant violation of international law”, Yun said. Malaysia is part of the 1993 pact prohibiting their production, transfer and use, but North Korea is not.

Once the Malaysian government releases the results of its investigation, the U.N. Security Council and state parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention should take up the case as a “high priority agenda”, Yun said.

States that have ratified the chemical weapons ban could invoke the treaty and “take collective measures”, he added.

“It could take the form of suspension of North Korea’s rights and privileges as a U.N. member,” he said.

‘REALITY TV PRANK’

Malaysia’s investigation into the killing has sparked diplomatic tension with North Korea, and on Tuesday a high- ranking delegation arrived in Kuala Lumpur from Pyongyang in a bid to smooth ties.

North Korea’s official media has made no mention of Kim Jong Nam, who had been living in exile, under Beijing’s protection, in the Chinese territory of Macau, and had criticised the regime of his family and his half-brother, Kim Jong Un.

But a report last week from the North’s KCNA state news agency blamed Malaysia for the death of one of its citizens there.

Security camera footage, which has been broadcast in the media, showed two women assaulting Kim Jong Nam in the departure hall of Kuala Lumpur International Airport. He died within 20 minutes.

Both of the women arrested have told diplomats from their countries that they had been paid to take part in what they believed was a prank for a reality television show.

Huong, the Vietnamese woman, was detained 48 hours after the murder in the same airport terminal where Kim Jong Nam was killed.

She is believed to be the woman wearing a white shirt emblazoned with the acronym “LOL”, whose image was caught on security cameras while waiting for a taxi after the attack.

The Indonesian woman, Siti Aishah, was detained a day later.

Police have said the women knew what they were doing when they attacked Kim Jong Nam and were instructed to wash their hands afterwards.

Police said Aishah fell sick, vomiting repeatedly while in custody possibly as a side-effect of VX, though Indonesian embassy officials have subsequently said she was in good health.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in GENEVA, Joseph Sipalan and Angie Teo in KUALA LUMPUR and Zahra Matarani in JAKARTA; Writing by Alex Richardson; Editing by Robert Birsel)

North Korea evades sanctions with network of overseas companies: U.N. report

FILE PHOTO - A North Korean flag flies on a mast at the Permanent Mission of North Korea in Geneva October 2, 2014. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo

By James Pearson

(Reuters) – North Korea is evading international sanctions with a sophisticated network of overseas companies, enabled partly by its continued access to the international banking system, says a forthcoming United Nations report seen by Reuters.

North Korea is under heavy U.N. sanctions and a strict arms embargo designed to impede the development of its banned nuclear and missile programs. The U.N. panel of experts, which produced the 100-page draft report, was created to investigate reported infringements of those sanctions.

“Designated entities and banks have continued to operate in the sanctioned environment by using agents who are highly experienced and well trained in moving money, people and goods, including arms and related materiel, across borders,” the report says.

U.N. member states should “exercise heightened vigilance” over North Korean diplomats engaged in commercial activities, it says, because some may be providing financial support to illegal networks.

North Korea “is flouting sanctions through trade in prohibited goods, with evasion techniques that are increasing in scale, scope and sophistication,” the report says.

It details a previously unknown interdiction of North Korean-made military communications equipment destined for Eritrea in July last year.

The interdiction was the second time North Korean military equipment bound for Eritrea had been intercepted, indicating an ongoing arms trade between the two countries, the report said.

The seized equipment, part of an air shipment, included 45 boxes of battlefield radios and accessories, the report says.

The radios were manufactured by a Malaysia-based front company called “Glocom”, which is controlled by the Reconnaissance General Bureau, the sanctioned North Korean intelligence agency tasked with overseas operations and weapons procurement, the report says.

INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

The report identifies two North Korean trading companies which, according to an unidentified U.N. member state, are linked to sanctioned entities, including the Reconnaissance General Bureau.

The report also outlines North Korea’s use of the financial system to pay for its sanctioned operations.

“Behind these illicit activities is the continued access of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the international banking system,” the report says, using North Korea’s official title.

“Despite strengthened financial sanctions in 2016, the country’s networks are adapting by using greater ingenuity in accessing formal banking channels,” the report said.

In cases where financial access is more restricted, North Korean agents use bulk cash and gold to circumvent the financial system entirely, and at times use foreign citizens as middlemen and facilitators.

The report says North Korea continues to export banned minerals despite last year’s sanctions putting a cap on coal exports, a key source of hard currency for the state’s nuclear and missile programs.

China has said it would ban coal imports from North Korea until the end of the year. On Thursday, North Korea issued a rare reproach of China, its main diplomatic backer, over the ban.

The U.N. report says enforcement of sanctions against North Korea “remains insufficient and highly inconsistent” and calls for additional measures to address shortcomings.

(Reporting By James Pearson; Editing by Bill Tarrant)