China calls for easing tension on Korean peninsula

By Fuat Kabakci

BEIJING

China on Monday called on all sides in the Korean peninsula to make constructive efforts to ease tension in the region.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying’s came after North Korea described the latest UN sanctions against it as “an act of war”.

On Friday, the United Nations Security Council unanimously imposed tough new sanctions on Pyongyang in retaliation for its recent illegal ballistic missile tests.

The new penalties seek up to 90 percent reduction in refined petroleum imports from summer 2017 levels, capping crude oil supplies to North Korea to just 500,000 barrels per year and also ban all previously allowed exports.

The sanctions require all countries with North Korean laborers earning wages to repatriate the workers within two years.

China, the North’s main trading partner, and Russia, where many of North Korea’s workers are sent, backed the U.S.-drafted measure in a sign of growing displeasure with Pyongyang.

North Korea said its last missile test Nov. 29 was of an intercontinental ballistic missile that could strike any part of the continental United States.