U.N.’s 1718 Committee does NADA about N. Korean missile agency; Update: Membership revoked!

NK News is reporting that North Korea’s National Aerospace Development Administration, whose name yields the unfortunate acronym “NADA,” has been accepted as a member of the International Astronautical Federation, a group that describes itself thusly:

Founded in 1951, the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) is the world’s leading space advocacy body with 246 members from 62 countries on six continents including all leading agencies, space companies, societies, associations, universities and institutes worldwide.

Hat tip to Chad O’Carroll for the link. As O’Carroll concedes, however, the source of his story is “an attendant of an annual congress event organized by the federation,” and the IAF itself hasn’t confirmed this. Let’s hope it backs off promptly, because in a report published earlier this year, a U.N. Panel of Experts monitoring compliance with international sanctions on North Korea found extensive links between NADA and North Korea’s banned missile programs, and recommended that NADA be designated and sanctioned by the Security Council.

First, the Panel’s findings:

Now, the Panel’s recommendations:

A designation would require all U.N. member states to immediately freeze all of NADA’s assets, and to expel its representatives from their countries.

As conspicuous a blunder as this is on IAF’s part — assuming this isn’t just the statement of one rogue member — the systemic problem it points to is the failure of the U.N. bureaucracy to act on the consistently superb reports of its own Panel of Experts. Eight months after the publication of the Panel’s latest report, the U.N.’s 1718 Committee, which is responsible for approving the designations, still hasn’t designated NADA. Meanwhile, NADA is free to pursue sensitive technology and international legitimacy, and to conceal its funds and operations.

Nor is this the first time the 1718 Committee has dropped the ball. It took the 1718 Committee a full year after the Chong Chon Gang incident to designate Ocean Maritime Management, the North Korean shipping company that was smuggling MiGs and missiles from Cuba to North Korea, in flagrant violation of U.N. sanctions. Each time the 1718 Committee is inexcusably slow in reacting to Panel of Experts reports, it becomes more apparent that it is a weak link in U.N. sanctions enforcement, either for political reasons, or because of the simple incompetence of its management.

Either way, as Security Council members continue to consider possible responses to a North Korean missile or nuclear test, they should be thinking about more than passing new sanctions. New sanctions on financial messaging, shipping, reflagging, air cargo, and insurance might be useful, but the Security Council should also focus on making the existing sanctions work better.

The obvious alternative is to simply do away with the 1718 Committee entirely, although that would depart from standard U.N. procedure. This panel-committee formulation isn’t unique to North Korea. A similar committee was also set up to approve Iran (and other) sanctions designations. The political reality is that member states will want to retain some control over designations. In that case, why not allow the recommended designations of the Panel of Experts to go into effect within 30 days, unless a majority of members of the 1718 Committee vote to disapprove them? That would have the advantage of forcing China and Russia to engage in their obstructionism more openly.

Another suggestion, which isn’t mutually exclusive with the last one, is to do what the Security Council’s resolutions did in the case of Iran — require the Committee to report to the Security Council regularly on its enforcement actions. That will ensure that the P-5 keep a careful eye on the enforcement of the sanctions resolutions, and hold the 1718 Committee accountable for the slovenly pace of its actions.

(By the way, I’d like to give my special thanks to the U.N., proprietor of possibly the world’s worst website, for effing up all of its hyperlinks and all of my bookmarks to its committees and designations. Sanctions geeks may wish to update their bookmarks with the U.N.’s consolidated sanctions list.) 

In the end, however, it will be up to individual member states to impose national sanctions in appropriate cases, without waiting for a dilatory U.N. Committee. That’s not only plausible, it has happened. The EU sanctioned the Korea National Insurance Corporation, which is not designated by the U.N., and the U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned the Foreign Trade Bank of North Korea, also not sanctioned by the U.N. A good first step would be for the U.S. and the EU to harmonize their own designations mutually. Next, they should seek the cooperation of Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, and other key middle powers holding North Korean property. Finally, they can reach smaller states, such as those that reflag North Korean ships and buy its weapons, and convince them to shun North Korea’s business. That strategy of progressive diplomacy will make it harder for the Chinese and the Russians to succeed in their obstructionism.

~   ~   ~

Update: Well, well. It seems after the IAF got some mail from concerned citizens in the U.N. Panel of Experts and the South Korea government, they revoked NADA’s membership. Chad O’Carroll has the rest of the story.