U.S. Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Robert Wood tells VOA that the international community should be concerned by growing cooperation between North Korea and Russia, especially on the military front.
Wood spoke with U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer at the United Nations, following a presentation by Jonah Leff of Conflict Armament Research, a U.K.-based group that tracks the supply of conventional weapons, ammunition and materiel into conflict-affected areas.
VOA: Ambassador Robert Wood, thanks for talking to us today. I just wanted to get your reaction to Mr. Leff’s remarks to the Security Council today on North Korea.
Robert Wood, U.S. deputy ambassador to the United Nations: I think what we heard from Mr. Leff today was an unfortunate reality, that DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] and Russia are engaged in military cooperation that should be of major concern to the broader international community. The transfer of technology from Russia to the DPRK, as we expect we are going to see through this new Comprehensive Strategic Partnership treaty, we think that this potential transfer of military technology is something that the United States, its partners, other countries around the world are going to be extremely concerned and are going to be watching this very closely. And I suspect China will be doing so as well. So, I think this level of cooperation should be, as I said, of great concern to the international community.
And then you have the issue of DPRK transferring missiles and other technology to Russia that it is using in its savage war against Ukraine. So, Mr. Leff’s examples that he used in the briefing, I think, were quite telling, quite concerning, and I think will motivate countries that are not looking at this issue as closely as they should. I think they will now look at what DPRK and Russia are doing with greater concern. And that, I think, is the result of this briefing. The international community should, frankly, be alarmed at what DPRK and Russia are doing together militarily. And it will be interesting to see how our Chinese friends react, because they also have a partnership of "no limits" with the Russian Federation. And this, of course, is raising tension levels in the Indo-Pacific. And countries are undoubtedly going to look for ways to improve their security, given this new threat that we are seeing from DPRK and Russia.
VOA: And so, what types of deterrents are available to the United States and your allies in the region?
Wood: Well, look, we have for years been looking to do what we could to increase our deterrence – and we will continue to do that. And we will continue to conduct exercises with our allies, we will be sharing information and cooperation, we will be looking at new ways to defend against these new threats. But the core issue here is we have a permanent member of the Security Council in clear violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions with regard to the DPRK – resolutions, by the way, that this permanent member, Russia, voted in favor of.
This is a unique situation we have here. And we are very concerned that this comprehensive partnership between Russia and DPRK grows. And I think frankly, China has got to be gravely concerned about this issue. And so, we will obviously be consulting closely with our partners to look for ways to enhance our deterrence. But we are not going to allow the DPRK and Russia to continue with this type of cooperation without there being the necessary deterrence steps taken to improve our security.
VOA: And we know Russia shut down the panel of experts in the Security Council. Has there been any progress toward some sort of new mechanism or monitoring system to replace it?
Wood: We are looking at various options to do that, because we think the reporting aspect of that the panel of experts provided, it’s now gone away, but we need to continue to provide the committee with the necessary reporting. I think the reports, such as the one we heard from [Leff], this is important information. The international community needs to hear about what DPRK is doing with regard to technology, what it is doing with regard to arms transfers. It clearly focuses — his reporting, other reports that we have — focus on this clear-cut violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, frankly. We are very concerned, obviously, about the level of cooperation, and that level increasing. This is new territory, when you have this permanent member engaging with a rogue state to undermine international peace and security. To answer your question, yes, we are looking at a number of options. And we will work on some things to enable, to provide the committee with objective information it needs to be able to do its work.
VOA: So, we are seeing resolutions of the council flouted; this week North Korea fired off some new missile with multiple warheads — or the intention of multiple warheads. Are sanctions failing?
Wood: Well, if sanctions are failing, it is because they are not being enforced and basically, certain countries are abetting sanctions evasion. You have a situation where we have seen the reports about DPRK testing MIRV [multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle] systems. They don’t have the capability at this point to deploy multiple warheads on a missile. But again, we have to look at this carefully. And it is concerning that they are in some way looking into MIRV technology. And they are looking into the use of hypersonics. This is of great concern to us, to our friends and allies, and it should be to the rest of the global community.
And again, all of this activity between DPRK and Russia — and just DPRK alone, its activities in the nuclear and ballistic missile field — are clear violations of Security Council resolutions. An important point here to reiterate, because again, what we are seeing now is one permanent member clearly, openly violating these council resolutions they voted to support. It’s really problematic.
VOA: Ambassador Robert Wood, thank you for your time.
Wood: Thank you, Margaret.
