North Korea criticises 'hostile' monitoring group's report
2/6/2025 5:57
North Korea condemned a
multilateral sanctions monitoring group's recent report on ties
with Russia as political and biased, saying its military
cooperation with Moscow was a "legitimate exercise of the
sovereign right," state media said on Monday.
A report by the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team, a
group comprising 11 UN members, said North Korea enabled Russia
to increase missile attacks against critical Ukrainian civilian
infrastructure and supplied more than 20,000 containers of
munitions.
The MSMT is "a political tool operating according to the
geopolitical interests of the West and, therefore, it has no
justification to investigate the exercise of sovereign rights of
other countries," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a
statement cited by the state KCNA news agency.
The ministry called the group's move "hostile" and
"outrageous encroachment" on its sovereignty.
The group also said Moscow helped North Korea improve
missile performance in return by supplying data. It was launched
in October last year to monitor U.N. sanctions against North
Korea after a Security Council panel was scrapped by Russia and
China.
After months of silence, North Korea and Russia confirmed in
April Pyongyang had deployed troops to fight for Russia in the
war in Ukraine as part of a comprehensive strategic partnership
treaty their leaders signed last year.
The Foreign Ministry said its Russia military cooperation
was legitimate following their treaty requiring each parties to
provide military assistance in case of an armed attack against
the other.
"We express serious concern over the provocative acts of the
West to encroach upon the sovereign rights of the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea with its unilateral and high-handed
political and legal standards as a yardstick and give stern
warning against the negative consequences to be entailed by its
reckless acts," the ministry said, according to state media.
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