WASHINGTON: US lawmakers called on Tuesday for a “supercharged” diplomatic response to North Korea’s nuclear tests, including unilateral sanctions on banks and other companies from China and any country doing business with Pyongyang.
“I believe the response from the United States and our allies should be supercharged,” said Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee.
“We need to use every ounce of leverage... to put maximum pressure on this rogue regime,” he said at a committee hearing on North Korea. “Time is running out.”
Royce said Washington did not need Beijing’s cooperation to increase pressure on North Korea.
“It’s been a long, long time of waiting for China to comply with the sanctions that we pass and frankly with the sanctions that the United Nations passed,” he said.
Lawmakers pressed State and Treasury Department officials for evidence that new sanctions could be more effective than earlier packages.
But they insisted any military option should be a last resort.
“It’s hard to overstate just how devastating a conflict on the Korean peninsula would be,” said Representative Eliot Engel, the committee’s top Democrat.
Assistant Treasury Secretary Marshall Billingslea acknowledged that he had not seen sufficient evidence that past sanctions made a difference.
He called on anyone in the international financial community aware of efforts to shield North Korean trade to come forward before getting caught up in the US “net.”
“We are closing in on North Korea’s trade representatives,” he said.
Royce, who said he had breakfast with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday, insisted sanctions could still have an impact.
“We can designate Chinese banks and companies unilaterally, giving them a choice between doing business with North Korea or the United States,” Royce said.
“We should go after banks and companies in other countries that do business with North Korea the same way,” Royce said.
The United Nations Security Council unanimously stepped up sanctions on Monday following Pyongyang’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3, imposing a ban on textile exports and capping imports of crude oil.
It was the ninth sanctions resolution unanimously adopted by the 15-member council since 2006 over North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs.
To win the support of China and Russia, Washington dropped demands including a bid for an oil embargo and the blacklisting of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the national airline.