The Trump administration has vigorously lobbied governments to isolate Pyongyang.
FERRARA, Italy — Italy has become the latest country to expel North Korea’s ambassador, saying that isolation was “inevitable” if Pyongyang continued to push ahead with its nuclear weapons program.
The decision comes as the United States urges countries that have diplomatic relations with North Korea to sever or at least scale them back.
Angelino Alfano, Italy’s foreign minister, said the North Korean ambassador in Rome, Mun Jong Nam, had been ordered to leave.
“We want to make Pyongyang realize that their isolation is inevitable if they don’t change tack,” Alfano told Italian newspaper la Repubblica in an interview published Sunday.
Mun had been in Rome barely a month, with his appointment announced by the North’s Korean Central News Agency on Aug. 28.
Italy becomes the fifth country to expel a North Korean ambassador, following in the footsteps of Spain, Mexico, Peru and Kuwait.
A United Nations Security Council resolution passed late last year required member states to reduce the number of staff at North Korean diplomatic missions and consular posts, and to limit the number of bank accounts to one per diplomatic mission and one per diplomat.
The Trump administration has been vigorously lobbying governments that have diplomatic relations with North Korea to curtail them as punishment for North Korea’s continued defiance of the international community’s calls to stop missile launches and nuclear tests.
After launching two intercontinental ballistic missiles in July technically capable of reaching the United States, North Korea detonated what it claimed to be a hydrogen bomb — a claim that most analysts and many governments believe is true.
