US warns Angola and Mozambique on links to North Korea – Financial Times report

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US warns Angola and Mozambique on links to North Korea – Financial Times report

8:46 CAT | 30 Jan 2018

Lusa (File photo)

The United States is stepping up pressure on African states to cut long-standing military and diplomatic ties with North Korea to try to limit international funding to the Asian country’s nuclear programme.

According to yesterday’s Financial Times, US officials want African countries to expel North Korean workers and diplomats, claiming that Pyongang’s 13 embassies on the continent are actually “profit-making centres.”

Washington says that North Korea, which is attempting to develop nuclear missiles capable of targeting cities in the United States, is using military cooperation and arms deals with African states to obtain foreign currency.

The United States also accuses some of the thousands of North Koreans living in Africa, including diplomats, of trafficking wildlife parts such as rhino horn, another relatively easy source of foreign currency.

According to US accounts, Pyongyang has made at least $100 million through the supply of arms, military training, construction contracts and smuggling.

The value, said the head of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Centre in Washington, may seem like “chump change,” but it is ““a fairly significant sum to the [North Korean] regime, given the overall squeeze on its finances”.

According to the FT, which notes the existence of an avenue in Maputo commemorating Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea, “many African states, including Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, have maintained close ties with North Korea since the ‘Cold War’, when Pyongyang offered material and ideological support to the liberation movements”.

Source: Lusa