US tones down its demands

The UN Security Council was expected to vote yesterday on a draft resolution imposing new sanctions on North Korea after the United States toned down its demands in a bid to win support from Russia and China.

Washington has led the international drive to punish the rogue state after it detonated its sixth and most powerful nuclear device earlier this month.

The United States had originally pushed for a strict oil embargo, as well as a freeze on the assets of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un.

A new draft text circulated late Sunday maintains an embargo on gas but would limit sales of oil to 500,000 barrels for three months from October 1 and 2 million barrels from January 1 for a period of 12 months, according to the text obtained by AFP.

Kim would be spared from a UN blacklist that would have hit him with an assets freeze and a travel ban and punished him directly for the country's military drive.

The proposed resolution, however, would slap a ban on textile exports from North Korea, but drop demands for a full halt to payments of North Korea workers.

It would add the name of North Korean senior official Pak Yong Sik, who helps direct the country's missile industries, to the blacklist along with three other North Korean agencies.

Among other concessions the new text also softens the inspection by force of ships suspected of carrying cargo prohibited by the UN and drops a proposed assets freeze on the state-owned Air Koryo airline.

Early yesterday, North Korea said it would not accept any chastisement over its nuclear and missile program, which it says is vital to stave off the threat of an American invasion.

If Washington does "rig up the illegal and unlawful 'resolution' on harsher sanctions, the DPRK shall make absolutely sure that the US pays due price," its foreign ministry said, in a statement published by the official KCNA news agency.

The North has a long history of making florid threats against Washington and its allies without following through on them.

"The forthcoming measures to be taken by the DPRK will cause the US the greatest pain and suffering it had ever gone through in its entire history," the ministry said.

Meanwhile, China has concluded that radiation levels remain normal in the provinces near the North Korean border after Pyongyang's most powerful nuclear test yet spurred concerns of residual environmental damage.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection announced Sunday it was ending its emergency radiation monitoring in response to the blast last week, which the North claimed was the successful detonation of a hydrogen bomb.