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The United States sought to play down signs of discord with China over how to enforce UN sanctions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear weapons program.
A day after the UN Security Council voted unanimously to slap weapons and financial sanctions against North Korea for its declared nuclear test, questions loomed about whether the measures would be fully enforced amid reservations from China.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insisted China would work to enforce the sanctions against North Korea despite Beijing's stated objections to cargo inspections.
“China is signed on to a resolution that pledges cooperation in stopping the proliferation trade with North Korea,” Rice said on the Fox News Sunday program.
“I'm quite certain that China has no interest in seeing the proliferation of dangerous materials from North Korea,” she said.
Rice, who was due to meet Asian leaders starting Tuesday to discuss the enforcement of the sanctions, acknowledged that there were “many details to be worked out, particularly about how this embargo and interdiction might work.”
The blunt-speaking US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, said Beijing bore a “heavy responsibility” to carry out the sanctions.
“The burden is on China to comply with the resolution,” Bolton said on CNN's Late Edition.
The resolution adopted by the Security Council on Saturday bans trade with North Korea in dangerous weapons, bars the export of heavy conventional weapons to the Stalinist state, calls for a freeze on financial assets and imposes a travel ban on those linked to the country's nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction programs.
The most hotly contested measure was the call for cargo inspections, which aims to prevent the cash-strapped North Korean regime from selling material for an atomic bomb to terrorists or rogue states.
Bolton said the measure could be carried out mainly by inspecting North Korean cargo once it reached foreign shores but he did not rule out risky high-seas search operations.
China, Pyongyang's main trade partner and which shares a long land border with North Korea, said immediately after the vote that it would not carry out intrusive inspections Washington says are called for in the resolution.
In a Sunday statement, the Chinese foreign ministry said the UN resolution demonstrated international resolve while offering a way to defuse the crisis peacefully.
“We advocate that the UN Security Council's action has to show the firm position of the international community, but on the other hand it also should be conducive towards resolving the problems through peaceful dialogue,” said ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao.
Russia has shared China's reluctance to back punishing sanctions favored by Japan and the United States. Moscow described the negotiations before the vote as “tense” and had favored time limits on any sanctions. In a concession, the United States agreed to drop any reference to a threat of military force.
While it remained unclear how the sanctions would be carried out, China and other world powers were in agreement in condemning North Korea for its nuclear test and its boycott of negotiations.
The resolution urged Pyongyang to give up its nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction in a verifiable manner and return to international negotiations that it has boycotted for nearly a year.
In Seoul, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alexeyev said the North Koreans had appeared willing to return to the bargaining table in talks last week.
“The North Korean side several times returned to the point that the six-sided process should continue,” said Alexeyev, according to Russian news agencies.
The Russian met Sunday with Chun Yung-Woo, South Korea's main nuclear negotiator, who said it was too early to be confident the talks could be revived.
“We have to see how North Korea will respond to the sanctions. After then, we can confidently talk about the diplomatic process,” Chun said.
North Korea's UN ambassador Pak Gil Yon angrily rejected the Council action.
“It is gangster-like for the Security Council to have adopted today a coercive resolution,” Pak said after the vote before walking out of the hall.
One of the world's most impoverished and isolated nations, communist North Korea has insisted that it needs nuclear arms to deter an attack by the United States, which it says is plotting to topple the regime.
The six-nation talks — involving China, Japan, Russia, North and South Korea, and the US — appeared to have won agreement from Pyongyang last year to give up its nuclear ambitions.
But the talks fell apart when the North withdrew after Washington imposed sanctions on a Macau bank that it said was laundering money from North Korea.
