SEOUL, South Korea – The Obama administration moved yesterday to push new sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear weapons programme, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defence Secretary Robert Gates showed solidarity with South Korea during a visit to the area that separates it from the North.Clinton announced the new measures – targeting the sale or purchase of arms and related goods used to fund the communist regime’s nuclear activities, and the acquisition of luxury items to reward its elite – after she and Gates toured the heavily fortified border in a symbolic trip four months after the sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on the North.Under sporadic downpours and the watchful gaze of curious North Korean guards, they paid tribute to the United States, South Korean and international forces that patrol the world’s last Cold War-era border. Sixty years after the fighting began, the peninsula remains divided in a state of war because the conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.Gates said the visit was intended “to send a strong signal to the North, to the region and to the world that our commitment to South Korea’s security is steadfast.”
(AP)
