North Korea actively protecting nuclear program, despite sanctions: UN report

North Korea's nuclear andballistic missile programs remain intact and the country isworking to make sure those capabilities cannot be destroyed byany military strikes, according to a confidential report by UNsanctions monitors.

The report to a 15-member UN Security Council sanctionscommittee, seen by Reuters on Monday, comes ahead of a secondplanned summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and NorthKorean leader Kim Jong-un later this month. The pairinitially metin June 2018 and Kim pledged to work toward denuclearization.

While Trump has hailed "tremendous progress" in his dealingswith North Korea, the UN report found that Pyongyang "is usingcivilian facilities, including airports, for ballistic missileassembly and testing with the goal of effectively preventing'decapitation' strikes" on a smaller number of identifiednuclear and missile assembly and manufacturing sites."

The report said it "found evidence of a consistent trend onthe part of the DPRK to disperse its assembly, storage andtesting locations," using the abbreviation for North Korea'sofficial name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The North Korean mission to the United Nations did notimmediately respond to a request for comment on the 317-pageUN report, which was submitted to Security Council members onFriday.

The UN Security Council has unanimously boosted sanctionson North Korea since 2006 in a bid to choke funding forPyongyang's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, banningexports including coal, iron, lead, textiles and seafood, andcapping imports of crude oil and refined petroleum products.

"The country continues to defy Security Council resolutionsthrough a massive increase in illegal ship-to-ship transfers ofpetroleum products and coal," the sanctions monitors found."These violations render the latest UN sanctions ineffective."

'Sanctions evasion techniques'

The monitors said they had evidence of one unprecedentedprohibited petroleum product transfer of more than 57,600barrels, worth more than $5.7 million US.

They said the case highlighted "new sanctions evasiontechniques that defeated the due diligence efforts of theregion's leading commodity trader, as well as the U.S. andSingaporean banks that facilitated the fuel payments and aleading U.K. insurer that provided protection and indemnity coverto one of the vessels involved."

The report accused North Korea of also violating a UN armsembargo and attempting "to sell a wide range of militaryequipment to armed groups and governments in the Middle East andAfrica," as well as small arms and light weapons to Libya, Sudanand the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The UN monitors also noted "a trend in the DPRK's evasionof financial sanctions using cyber attacks to illegally forcethe transfer of funds from financial institutions andcryptocurrency exchanges."

North Korea is subject to a ban on luxury goods and themonitors said they are investigating the public appearance of arelatively new Rolls-Royce Phantom limousine in Pyongyang onOct. 7 last year, which usually sells for hundreds of thousandsof dollars.

Russia and China suggested the Security Council discusseasing sanctions after Trump and Kim met for the first time. Butthe United States and other council members have said there mustbe strict enforcement of sanctions until Pyongyang acts.