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US warns North Korea over 'suicidal' nuclear threat as UN expands sanctions - The Guardian

Posted: 07 Mar 2013 09:58 AM PST

Tania Branigan in Beijing and Ewen MacAskill in Washington

UN ambassador Susan Rice votes at a security council meeting on imposing a fourth round of sanctions against North Korea. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The United Nations security council has voted unanimously to punish North Korea for last month's nuclear test with a toughened sanctions regime, hours after Pyongyang threatened to unleash a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the United States.

Secretary general Ban Ki-moon, a former South Korean foreign minister, said the resolution "sent an unequivocal message to [the North] that the international community will not tolerate its pursuit of nuclear weapons".

The decision by the 15-member council followed lengthy negotiations between the United States and China, the North's main ally. Measures range from tightened financial restrictions to cargo inspections and an explicit ban on exports of yachts and racing cars to the North, but experts say the real issue is enforcement.

China's UN ambassador Li Baodong said Beijing, Pyongyang's main trading partner, wanted to see "full implementation" of the resolution.

Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, told reporters that the measures would "bite hard". She added: "North Korea will achieve nothing by continued threats and provocations."

A foreign ministry spokesman in Pyongyang threatened to launch "pre-emptive nuclear strikes on the headquarters of the aggressors" because Washington was pushing to start a nuclear war against it, in a statement hours before the UN vote.

Experts do not believe the North has managed to produce a warhead small enough to be mounted on a missile that could reach the US. They also pointed out that the original Korean language version referred to "invaders" rather than merely the "aggressors" of the English translation.

Jennifer Lind, assistant professor of government at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, said that while the statement was disturbing, "North Korea has a long history of bluster and issuing threats that of course it does not carry out, [such as] its long term threats of turning Seoul into a sea of fire."

Earlier this week the North threatened to cancel the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War.

Thursday's resolution condemns the North's third nuclear test "in the strongest possible terms" as a flagrant breach of previous resolutions, which bar it from testing or using nuclear or ballistic missile technology and importing or exporting material for the programmes.

It aims to hinder those programmes but also targets the ruling elite. A ban on luxury exports was introduced in 2006, but countries could decide what fell under that rubric; this time, specific items are identified.

The resolution warns the North against further provocations and demands its return to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. But it also stresses the council's commitment "to a peaceful, diplomatic and political solution" and urges a resumption of six-party talks.

All countries are required to freeze financial transactions – including the transport of suitcases stuffed with cash – or services that could contribute to the North's nuclear or missile programmes. Public financial support for trade deals that could assist the programmes is outlawed.

Countries must expel agents working for blacklisted companies from the North. They must inspect aircraft or vessels with suspect cargo and deny entry to those that refuse inspection.

Hazel Smith, an expert on the North at Cranfield University, said the key question was how rigorously the US implemented financial sanctions, citing tough measures taken by Washington towards the end of the Bush administration.

"They did have a major effect; they also paralysed diplomacy. But there is no diplomacy happening now," she said.

Analysts suggest the immediate reaction of the North is likely to be further angry rhetoric and possibly another nuclear test, as Pyongyang hinted earlier. South Korean government sources cited by Seoul news agency Yonhap said on Wednesday that the North had imposed no-fly and no-sail zones off its coasts, apparently preparing for military drills.

"North Korea will throw their usual histrionics about the resolution," said Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University in Seoul in an interview prior to the latest threat.

"Every time there's an escalation the risk of confrontation increases. But neither side wants anything to happen."

At a Senate foreign relations committee hearing on North Korea, chairman Robert Menendez described the nuclear strike threat as "absurd and suicidal".

Menendez, a Democrat, was holding the hearing as the UN security council voted for the resolution. He welcomed the new sanctions but said the US needed to do more to combine sanctions and military countermeasures with strong and realistic diplomacy aimed at North Korea and China.

"There should be no doubt about our determination, willingness, and capability to neutralise and counter any threat that North Korea may present," Menendez said. "I do not think the regime in Pyongyang wants to commit suicide, but that, as they must surely know, would be the result of any attack on the United States."

Glyn Davies, the State Department's special representative on North Korea, warned of "costly consequences" for the country.

Its 12 February nuclear test, he said, represented "an even bolder threat to US national security, the stability of the region and the global non-proliferation regime".

Davies told the committee the Pentagon was working with its counterparts in Japan and South Korea to ensure protection against an attack.

The US would continue to look at unilateral sanctions against banks and other North Korean-linked bodies and seek to harmonise existing sanctions with other countries, he added.

The US will not engage in negotiations unless there is a fundamental change in attitudes in North Korea. "The DPRK leadership must choose between provocation or peace, isolation or integration," Davies said.

Thousands Line Up for Last Glimpse of Chávez - New York Times

Posted: 07 Mar 2013 09:08 AM PST

By WILLIAM NEUMAN and CHRISTINE HAUSER

Published: March 7, 2013

CARACAS, Venezuela — Thousands of people waited for hours on Thursday to pay a moment of respect to the body of the late president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, dressed in his iconic red beret and green military uniform, visible to his people one last time.

The lines, steeped in loyalty and grief, started on Wednesday and stretched through the night at a military academy Mr. Chávez once attended, where he will lie in state until his funeral on Friday.

Many saluted the president's remains. Others crossed themselves. Government television broadcast the endless passage of mourners. One elderly woman beat her breast and nearly fainted. Parents and guards in dark suits picked up small children to give them a look.

"He had his beret on, his red beret, and he looked as if he were sleeping," said Luis Cabrera Aguirre, a retired rear admiral who served as an adviser to Mr. Chávez and was among the first group of officials permitted access.

He said that Mr. Chávez's head and torso were visible through a panel of glass at the coffin's upper half. The closed lower half was draped with the Venezuelan flag. Admiral Cabrera Aguirre said that Mr. Chávez's face and especially his neck appeared a little swollen or puffy, but that otherwise, "he looked just like he did in life."

Mr. Chávez, who was nearly omnipresent here in his 14-year rule, was not seen in Venezuela since leaving for Cuba for his fourth and last cancer surgery on Dec. 11. Even after the announcement of his return, in a pre-dawn flight on Feb. 18, he remained out of sight, while officials said he continued treatment at a Caracas military hospital. His death was announced Tuesday afternoon. He was 58 years old.

Conflicting accounts of his final days were beginning to emerge.

On Thursday, the Reuters news agency reported that a government source said that Mr. Chávez's health deteriorated rapidly after he held a bedside meeting with government ministers over the weekend. The source said that, with the cancer having spread to his lungs, Mr. Chávez had fallen into a coma on Monday, and that he died the next day of respiratory failure.

However, the head of Venezuela's presidential guard, Gen. José Ornella, told The Associated Press late Wednesday that Mr. Chávez died of a major heart attack.

General Ornella said that he was with Mr. Chávez at the moment of his death, and that among his final words were, "I don't want to die. Please don't let me die," the general said, adding, "because he loved his country, he sacrificed himself for his country."

"He couldn't speak, but he said it with his lips," General Ornella said.

Over his final weeks of seclusion, the opposition clamored for Mr. Chávez to make an appearance, and even some of his supporters began to question why he was unable to show himself.

On Thursday, lying in state, Mr. Chávez was finally reunited with his people once more.

Despite a rocky economic record and strings of broken or half-filled promises during his 14 years in office, the fundamental legacy of Mr. Chávez was intangible: he has changed the way Venezuelans think about themselves and their country.

Just as they did on Thursday, when people lined up for one last glimpse of their leader, enormous crowds thronged the streets on Wednesday to watch Mr. Chávez's modest brown wood coffin, covered in a Venezuelan flag, being carried through the capital, Caracas.

As it wound its way from the hospital where he died to the military academy where he studied as a young, unheralded cadet, hundreds of thousands of mourners — many dressed in his movement's characteristic red shirt — chanted, cried, tossed flowers or held up cellphones to photograph the coffin as it passed.

The procession on Wednesday stretched for miles, a river of red with drivers and motorcyclists trailing behind in an impromptu cortege.

"Chávez opened our eyes," said Carlos Pérez, 58, a cookie salesman who drove into town with his wife and took part in the caravan. "We used to be stepped on. We felt humiliated."

Conditions for the poor have certainly improved over the last decade and a half, and the ranks of the poor have shrunk. Government programs have given poor people access to low-cost food and free health care and have knocked down barriers to higher education, though many of those programs are plagued by inefficiencies and long waits.

Mr. Chávez mined and deepened the divide between the masses of Venezuela's poor and the middle and upper classes, presiding over a bitterly divided country. He mercilessly taunted and insulted those who disagreed with him, calling them fascists, good-for-nothings, traitors, oligarchs, reactionaries and puppets of the United States.

And he warned ceaselessly of enemies, inside and outside the country, who he said were poised to take away from the poor the benefits they had received under his government.

According to the Constitution, a new presidential vote must be called within 30 days. The vice president, Nicolás Maduro, 50, became the acting president, and already he appears likely to face a Chávez rival who had put in a strong performance in previous polls.

Reuters quoted opposition sources as saying on Wednesday that they have agreed to back Henrique Capriles, 40, the centrist governor of Miranda State who garnered 44 percent of the vote but lost to Mr. Chávez in last year's election.

William Neuman reported from Caracas, and Christine Hauser from New York.

Kredit: www.nst.com.my

Khamis, 7 Mac 2013