U.N. council sanctions North Korea entities, officials

By Patrick Worsnip

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council on Thursday expanded the list of North Korean bodies and individuals under sanctions for nuclear and missile activities, adding Pyongyang's atomic energy agency and two of its top officials.

Altogether, the council's North Korea sanctions committee clamped five new organizations and five people under asset freezes and travel bans, and banned the import into the reclusive communist state of two weapons-related materials.

Announcement of the list followed a month of committee haggling after the Security Council expanded U.N. sanctions against North Korea in a June 12 resolution that responded to a nuclear test Pyongyang carried out on May 25.

The entities sanctioned are North Korea's General Bureau of Atomic Energy (GBAE) and four trading companies, committee chairman Fazli Corman, Turkey's U.N. Ambassador, said.

The individuals are Ri Je-son and Hwang Sok-hwa, both described as directors at the GBAE, one other nuclear official and two trading company directors.

The measure, binding on all 192 U.N. member states, greatly lengthens an existing blacklist, consisting only of two companies and a bank involved in Pyongyang's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

Arms sales are a vital source of foreign currency for destitute North Korea, which has a yearly GDP of about $17 billion and a broken economy that produces few other items it can export.

Analysts have said the new U.N. measures will make it more costly for the North to trade arms but they will not likely deter customers, including Iran, who have shown little interest in joining international plans to punish Pyongyang.

The sanctions committee includes all 15 Security Council members, among them China, the closest Pyongyang has to an ally. Western diplomats said Beijing had slowed the work of the committee but had in the end gone along with the sanctions.

COMMITTEE TO CONTINUE WORK

The committee was created after the council adopted punitive measures against North Korea for its first nuclear test in October 2006 but had been dormant until April of this year when it put the first three names on the sanctions list.

That move followed a long-range rocket launch earlier in the month by Pyongyang. Security Council resolutions ban ballistic missile launches by North Korea.

Western countries welcomed Thursday's committee action.

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said it would "strengthen the sanctions regime against North Korea and will serve to constrain North Korea from engaging in transactions or activities that could fund its WMD (weapons of mass destruction) or proliferation activities."

Japanese Ambassador Yukio Takasu called the measures "a major achievement."