Wed Jul 1, 2009 6:19am EDT
By Jon Herskovitz
SEOUL (Reuters) - A North Korean ship tracked by the U.S. Navy on suspicion of carrying a banned arms cargo may be returning home, a U.S. official said, as Washington cracks down on companies helping Pyongyang export missile systems.
North Korea will find it increasingly difficult to trade arms due to U.S. moves and U.N. sanctions to punish it for a May nuclear test, but those measure will not end the weapons exports the destitute state relies on for foreign currency, experts said.
"Of course, it raises the costs of doing the arms and weapons of mass destruction business, but it won't stop them from trying to circumvent the sanctions," said Daniel Pinkston with the International Crisis Group in Seoul.
The North Korean cargo ship Kang Nam was the first to be monitored by the U.S. Navy under a new system to track the North's arms shipments that were a part of the U.N. sanctions..........
The moves came as Philip Goldberg, U.S. envoy for coordinating arms and other sanctions against North Korea under a recent U.N. resolution, headed for Beijing, seeking to enlist China's help in targeting the North's weapons programme.
China, the North's biggest benefactor, backed a U.N. resolution condemning the North's nuclear test and imposing fresh sanctions on its arms trade, but Beijing has long been reluctant to press for more.
"As long as China, to a large extent, and Russia, to a lesser extent, do not implement the sanctions, they will not work," said Cho Myungchul, a research fellow at the South's Korea Institute for International Economic Policy.........
Within North Korea, the food crisis was worsening with aid drying up following its May nuclear test, a U.N. official just back from the country said in Beijing.
"But more importantly it should be noted that we have a situation where a very large part of the population has been undernourished for 15 or 20 years," Torben Due, the World Food Programme's North Korea country representative, told reporters.