US Relisting N Korea as Sponsor of Terror Unlikely to Improve Situation - Moscow

Relisting North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States will hardly improve the situation on the Korean peninsula, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On Wednesday, the United States Foreign Affairs Committee passed a set of measures proposing to enhance sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear activity and to re-list the country as a state sponsor of terrorism.

"It is a big question whether the rhetoric of these actions of the United States leads to improving of the situation. We have a feeling that it will lead to an opposite result," Zakharova said at a briefing.

The spokeswoman stressed that the sanction mechanism is effective only within the United Nations by working out common methods for resolving the crisis.

"We have always been stressing, both in the context of the situation on the Korean peninsula and in other situations, that the only effective sanctions are only those imposed within the United Nations… The situation on the Korean peninsula is the case when the steps should be aimed not at worsening the situation, but at its settlement," Zakharova said.

North Korea was included on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1987, after a blast on board a South Korean aircraft that resulted in the killing of 115 people was thought to be organized by North Korean special services. In 2008, Pyongyang was removed from the list to facilitate progress in denuclearization talks.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula escalated since North Korea carried out a number of missile launches and nuclear tests, one of the latest being a launch of four missiles in the direction of the Sea of Japan conducted on March 6 and a new high-thrust rocket engine tested on the ground on March 18. The launches are considered to be in violation with the UNSC resolution by the United Nations.