After months in limbo due to Chinese objections, a UN report suggesting North Korea may have supplied Syria, Iran and Myanmar with banned nuclear technology is heading to the Security Council. The latest report by the so-called Panel of Experts on Pyongyang's compliance with UN sanctions was delivered to the Security Council's North Korea sanctions committee in May.
Normally such a report would be reviewed and passed to the council for consideration of possible action. But the report on North Korea did not move for nearly six months due to Chinese objections and its fate was unclear until Friday, council diplomats told Reuters on Monday. The North Korea report should be published on the sanction committee's website as early as Tuesday, they said.
The attempt to prevent the report's transfer to the Security Council and release to the public, envoys said, was emblematic of China's increasingly self-confident approach to international diplomacy as it seeks to protect states like North Korea and Sudan to which it has close ties.
Reuters reported in May that the report said there was reason to suspect North Korea - under UN sanctions for testing nuclear devices in 2006 and 2009 - has become a proliferator of banned technology. The 75-page document, obtained by Reuters, said the panel was concerned about reports of "continuing DPRK (North Korea) involvement in nuclear and ballistic missile related activities in certain countries including Iran, Syria and Myanmar." Last week, China chose to keep silent when the sanctions committee asked its members - the 15 nations on the Security Council - if they had any objections to the report. That allowed it to formally move to the council.
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