Russia won’t heed US request to break ties with North Korea, Lavrov says
Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has rejected a U. S. call to cut ties with North Korea. He said the U. S. appears to be provoking Pyongyang, one day after President Donald Trump promised to impose fresh sanctions on the country in the wake of its newest missile launch.
Russia looked negatively on U. S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley’s call for countries to end relations with North Korea and believes that sanctions pressure is “exhausted,” according to a read-out of Lavrov’s address to reporters at a security summit in Belarus, published by Russia’s foreign ministry.
Lavrov suggested recent U. S. behavior indicated it wanted to push North Korea into a war.
He accused the U. S. of misleading Russia over plans for joint-military exercises with South Korea intended to deter the North. He said that U. S. officials had privately said no exercises would be held before the spring, which Moscow hoped might bring a pause in the crisis. But the U. S has since conducted unscheduled drills twice this autumn and plans another in December.
« We have the impression that all of this is done specially so that Kim Jong Un will go off the rails and take yet another reckless step, » Lavrov said, referring to North Korea’s leader. « It’s sad. If they want to find a pretext for the destruction of North Korea, as the U. S. representative stated in the U. N., let them say that straight. Then we will take a decision on how to react to that.
