UN council to vote Friday on blacklisting more North Koreans - diplomats

The United Nations Security Council will vote on Friday on a U.S. and Chinese proposal to blacklist more North Korean individuals and entities after the country's repeated ballistic missile launches, diplomats said on Thursday.

The draft resolution, seen by Reuters, would sanction four entities, including the Koryo Bank and Strategic Rocket Force of the Korean People's Army, and 14 people, including Cho Il U, who is believed to head North Korea's overseas spying operations.

If adopted, they would be subjected to a global asset freeze and travel ban. The measures could have been agreed by the council's North Korea sanctions committee behind closed doors, but a public vote would amplify the body's anger at Pyongyang's defiance of a U.N. ban on ballistic missile launches.

The United States had been negotiating with Pyongyang ally China for five weeks on possible new sanctions. The pair reached agreement and circulated the draft resolution to the remaining 13 council members on Thursday.

It is the first Security Council sanctions resolution on North Korea agreed between the United States and China since President Donald Trump took office in January.

It was not immediately clear if council veto power Russia would support the draft resolution after the United States on Thursday imposed its own sanctions on two Russian firms for their support of North Korea's weapons programs.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow was puzzled and alarmed by the U.S. decision and that Russia was preparing retaliatory measures, Russian media reported.

The Security Council first imposed sanctions on Pyongyang in 2006 over its ballistic missile and nuclear programs and has ratcheted up the measures in response to five nuclear tests and two long-range missile launches. North Korea is threatening a sixth nuclear test.

The Trump administration has been pressing Beijing aggressively to rein in North Korea, warning that all options are on the table if Pyongyang persists with its nuclear and missile development.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the U.N. Security Council on April 28 that it needed to act before North Korea does. Just hours after the meeting, chaired by Tillerson, Pyongyang launched yet another ballistic missile.

Within days the United States proposed to China that the Security Council strengthen sanctions on North Korea over its repeated missile launches. Traditionally, the United States and China have negotiated new sanctions before involving the other council members.

Since then Pyongyang has launched several more ballistic missiles, including a short-range one on Monday that landed in the sea off its east coast.