Russia and China Block US Initiative
By Carla Stea
July 28, 2018
Former US President Jimmy Carter: “I think it is hard for some people to understand how fearful North Korea is that they will be attacked by the United States.” (Following his successful negotiation of a peace agreement with North Korea in 1994)
It is doubtful that there is confusion about the meaning of “denuclearization,” which, according to many western media reports, is a word which allegedly means one thing to the DPRK, and has an entirely different interpretation by the US. The Singapore Summit Agreement signed by President Trump and DPRK Chairman Kim Jong Un specifies:
“3: Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward Complete Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” “President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK, and Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”
In a written document signed by President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un, the Singapore Summit explicitly speaks of denuclearization of the ENTIRE Korean peninsula. At no point does the document specify unilateral denuclearization of the DPRK. What is clear from the meeting between Pompeo, Haley and the UN Security Council, on July 20, is that the US has no intention of negotiating the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, nor is there any evidence that the US intends to honor the second commitment of the Singapore Summit, as signed by Trump and Kim:
“2. The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean peninsula.”
The US obviously does not intend to negotiate with North Korea, it intends to dictate to North Korea, and pressures the UN Security Council to further the strangulation of the DPRK by halting all additional oil shipments to North Korea. Fortunately, at last, China and Russia blocked this aggression by the US, stating they need more information. Haley stated she had “photographs of proof” of 89 ship-to-ship transfers of oil in violation of the sanctions. Haley’s “photographs” are reminiscent of Colin Powell’s fraudulent photographs of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, which he displayed before the UN Security Council, and which were later exposed as fabrications.
Ambassador Haley stated:
“We don’t need any more information. The problem that we are encountering is that some of our friends have decided that they want to go around the rules.”
Haley, who “needs no more information,” is perpetuating the “shoot first, ask questions later,” approach to the DPRK, which North Korea legitimately described as “gangster-like, and cancerous.”
Haley states that “some of our friends have decided that they want to go around the rules.” As the US has imposed “the rules,” and bullied, threatened and bribed the Security Council to support these malignant sanctions, Haley is in no position to reprimand Russia and China for acting honorably, and refusing to be dominated by “rules” forced upon them by the US. It is a tragedy that Russia and China supported these barbaric sanctions for many years, and if they have now discovered their own dignity and honor, and refuse to be bullied into further annihilating the DPRK, that is to be admired, finally. Like a kindergarten teacher patronizing recalcitrant students, Haley stated:
“We put pressure today on China and Russia to abide and be good helpers through this situation and to help us continue with denuclearization.”
Contrary to Haley’s preposterous allegations, the Security Council sanctions exacerbate the deadly conflict that catapulted the world toward the abyss of nuclear war within the past twelve months. There is absolutely no reason why North Korea should denuclearize before a peace treaty between the US and DPRK is signed, replacing the armistice, which imperils the DPRK up until this very moment. Though the DPRK has not tested any missiles for almost a year, and the US has postponed the provocative US-ROK military exercises recently, those terrifying military exercises, entitled “Decapitation of the Government of the DPRK,” and other alarming designations can be resumed at any point. In an interview with Channel 13, following his successful negotiation of a peace agreement with North Korea in 1994, former President Jimmy Carter stated:Facts of the Korean War: UN Security Council, Instrument of US led Wars, Blatantly Biased Against North Korea
“I think it is hard for some people to understand, in fact including me, how fearful North Korea is that they will be attacked by the United States.”
The US failure to agree to a peace treaty is a venal posture perpetuating the recent crisis situation. One must ask why the US is refusing to sign a peace treaty, and the refusal suggests an intention, at some point, near or in the future, to resume to monstrous war inflicted on North Korea and China from 1950-1953. In 1950 the US attacked North Korea before a UN resolution was passed authorizing the attack. John H. Kim, a US Army veteran and the Chair of the Korea Committee of Veterans for Peace, stated that during the Korean War “the U.S. Army, Air Force and Navy were directly involved in the killing of about three million civilians at many locations throughout Korea,” and predominantly in the North. The US dropped almost one million tons of bombs, and more than 50,000 tons of napalm on North Korea. In addition to the massacre of millions of North Koreans, more than one million Chinese were killed by US-UN armed forces. The US-UN forces used biological warfare against both North Korea and China, and both North Korea and China were threatened with annihilation by atomic bombs.
One of the greatest historic documents exposing the criminality of the US-UN attack on North Korea is the brilliant July 4, 1950 statement by Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko. His scathing denunciation of the US violation of the UN charter, and connivance in manipulating the Security Council to obtain a resolution supporting their violation of international law, was circulated as an official document of the UN Security Council, and is excerpted here:
“It is known that the United States government had started armed intervention in Korea before the Security Council was summoned to meet on June 27, without taking into consideration what decision the Security Council might take. Thus the US government confronted the United Nations with a fait accompli, with a violation of peace. The Security Council merely rubber-stamped and back-dated the resolution proposed by the US government, approving the aggressive actions which this government had undertaken. Furthermore, the American resolution was adopted by the Security Council with a gross violation of the Charter of the United Nations. ….It is also known that the UN Charter envisages the intervention of the Security Council only in those cases where the matter concerns events of an international order, and not of an internal character. Moreover, the Charter directly forbids the intervention of the United Nations in the internal affairs of any state when it is a matter of an internal conflict between two groups of one state. Thus the Security Council by its decision of June 27 violated also this most important principle of the United Nations….”
“It follows from the aforesaid that this resolution, which the US government is using as a cover for its armed intervention in Korea, was illegally put through the Security Council with a gross violation of the Charter of the United Nations. This only became possible because the gross pressure of the US government on the members of the Security Council converted the United Nations into a kind of branch of the US State Department, into an obedient tool of the policy of American ruling circles who acted as violators of peace.”
“It is impossible not to note the unseemly role played in that whole affair by the UN Secretary-General, Mr. Trygve Lie. Being under the obligation, by virtue of his position, to observe the exact fulfilment of the UN Charter, the Secretary-General, during discussion of the Korean problem in the Security Council, far from fulfilling his direct duties, on the contrary obsequiously helped a gross violation of the Charter to be committed by the government of the US and other Security Council members. Thereby the Secretary-General showed that he is concerned not so much with strengthening the UN organization and with promoting peace, as with how to help the United States’ ruling circles to carry out their aggressive plans with regard to Korea.”
Almost identical nefarious tactics are currently being used to pressure the Security Council to support the multiple sanctions resolutions against the DPRK, sanctions which demonstrably constitute crimes against humanity. It seems that nothing has changed during the 68 years since Andrei Gromyko exposed the Machiavellian methods by which the US obtained “authorization” for the war crimes committed against North Korea.
Nuclear expert Siegfried Hecker has stated that safety requires that denuclearization should be phased over a 10 year period or longer. To state, as Pompeo and Haley, and, indeed Trump have reiterated that “UN Security Council sanctions will remain until the complete denuclearization of the DPRK” is a psychopathic demand, consigning the people of the DPRK to slow, agonized deaths by starvation, disease, and other atrocious consequences of the hypocritical and covertly homicidal sanctions policies. When Pompeo said: “They need to completely, fully de-nuclearize, that’s the steps that Chairman Kim committed to and that the world has demanded through UN Security Council resolutions,” Pompeo falsified the reality. Kim committed only to the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula under conditions of “lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.” Pompeo’s and Haley’s and Trump’s distortion of Kim’s position is a betrayal of the Singapore agreement, and the DPRK rightly described their position as “cancerous.”
And in a tiny paragraph, barely noticeable in a recent Washington Post article, was the admission that:
“UN sanctions announced last August stepped up the pressure by removing the parts of prior sanctions that had attempted to avoid humanitarian consequences.”
On July 23, CNN reported:
“North Korea wants US to make ‘bold move’ toward peace before denuclearization…and agree to a peace treaty with Pyongyang…If the US is unwilling to replace the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War with a permanent peace that would ensure the survival of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s regime, Pyongyang will likely not proceed further with denuclearization talks, according to an official with close knowledge of North Korea’s position on the matter.”
* Carla Stea is Global Research’s correspondent at the United Nations Headquarters, New York, N.Y.
Featured image is from The Algemeiner.
