Security Council Tightens Economic Vise on North Korea, Blocking Fuel, Ships and Workers<br />Speaking to reporters before the meeting, Matthew Rycroft, the British ambassador, said the unity<br />of Council members on North Korea showed they were “seeing the bigger interests we all have.”<br />Asked if the new measures would make life even harder for ordinary North Koreans, Mr. Rycroft blamed their government, saying it “uses every cent, every penny<br />that it can on its nuclear program and its intercontinental ballistic missile program and nothing at all on the welfare of the poor people of North Korea.”<br />Under Mr. Kim, a grandson of the country’s founder, Kim Il-sung, the impoverished country of 25 million has exalted nuclear weapons<br />and threatened to use them against the United States, its No.<br />Nikki R. Haley, the American ambassador, thanked the other Council members — especially China — for coming together on the resolution<br />and said further North Korean defiance would “invite further punishment and isolation.”<br />Ms. Haley called North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile test last month “another attempt by<br />the Kim regime to masquerade as a great power while their people starve and their soldiers defect.”<br />China’s deputy ambassador, Wu Haitao, said the latest measures reflected “the unanimous position of the international community”<br />and he urged North Korea to “refrain from conducting any further nuclear and missile tests.”<br />But he also emphasized China’s longstanding position<br />that all antagonists in the dispute needed to de-escalate and find ways to resume a dialogue, asserting that there was “no military option for settling the nuclear issue” on the Korean Peninsula.
