US and allies step up efforts on North Korea sanctions

Over the blue waters of the East China Sea, a Canadian air force patrol crew scans the horizon, searching for vessels suspected of making illicit transfers of oil to North Korea, News.Az reports citing Voice of America.

The 20-member crew aboard the Aurora CP-140 is on the front line of a U.S.-led multinational effort to enforce United Nations sanctions that cap North Korea's oil imports.

On this clear day in mid-October, the Canadian plane is patrolling international waters off the coast of China — a hotspot, the crew says, for ships attempting to dodge sanctions.

When they locate a suspicious vessel, the crew swoops low, circling to snap pictures from multiple angles. The idea is to "make our presence known," said Major Doug Publicover, the commander of the Canadian mission.

The Canadians pass the information to the Enforcement Coordination Cell, or ECC, a loose configuration of 11 nations that conduct surveillance and share intelligence on North Korea's sanctions violations.

"It's a small piece of the pie," Publicover said of Canada's contribution, "but each country does their bit, and hopefully that deterrence can be larger."

Sanctions under strain

Since 2006, U.N. Security Council sanctions have restricted much of North Korea's economic activity as punishment for its nuclear and missile programs. The sanctions limit North Korea's annual imports to 4 million barrels of crude oil and 500,000 barrels of refined products.

U.S. officials, however, say North Korea regularly exceeds these limits, mainly because of a lack of enforcement by China and Russia — North Korea's key allies. Both countries deny those claims but have taken steps to blunt the impact of the sanctions, which they say are no longer necessary.

Earlier this year, Russia vetoed the renewal of a U.N. panel that monitored sanctions violations. China abstained from the vote. As an alternative, the U.S. and its allies this week created the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team, or MSMT, which aims to fill the intelligence gap left by the disbanded panel.

"We just collect information, we tabulate it, and we push it off," says Royal Canadian Air Force Commander Larry Moraal, the ECC's deputy director. "[But] they'll have greater access to the international community than we do."

News.Az