FILE - In this undated file photo released by the Korean Central News Agency and distributed Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013 in Tokyo by the Korea News Service, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends a consultative meeting with officials in the fields of state security and foreign affairs at undisclosed location in North Korea. U.N. diplomats say the United States and China have reached agreement on a new sanctions resolution to punish North Korea for its latest nuclear test. (AP Photo/Korean Central News Agency via Korea News Service, File)
FILE - In this Wed., Feb. 13, 2013 file photo, a South Korean protester shouts slogans near an effigy of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during an anti-North Korea rally to denounce North Korea's nuclear test in Seoul, South Korea, a day after North Korea defied U.N. warnings with a nuclear test. The Cold War still rages in North Korea, and enemy No. 1 is the United States, which Pyongyang blames for making necessary its much-condemned drive to build nuclear weapons. North Korea?s latest nuclear test in February - its third - has led even China, its only major ally, to support a new round of U.N. sanctions. A draft resolution is expected to be circulated this week at the U.N. The West condemns the North's nuclear bombs as a serious threat to Northeast Asia's delicate security and a drain on precious resources that could go to North Korea's largely destitute people. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)
UNITED NATIONS (AP) ? A U.S.-China draft resolution aimed at reining in North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile program would impose some of the strongest sanctions ever ordered by the United Nations, in a move certain to infuriate the regime and inflame tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
The proposed resolution put forward by the United States and China ? North Korea's closest ally ? followed Pyongyang's third nuclear test on Feb. 12. It reflected the U.N. Security Council's growing anger over the country's defiance of three previous rounds of sanctions aimed at halting all nuclear and missile tests.
Pyongyang threatened to cancel the 1953 cease-fire that ended the Korean War in response to the looming fourth round of sanctions. North Korea insists its nuclear program is a response to American hostility that dates back to the Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty, leaving the Korean Peninsula still technically in a state of war.
"North Korea will be subject to some of the toughest sanctions imposed by the United Nations," Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. said. "The breadth and scope of these sanctions is exceptional and demonstrates the strength of the international community's commitment to denuclearization and the demand that North Korea comply with its international obligations."
Rice and China's U.N. Ambassador Li Baodong, who negotiated the text behind closed doors over the last three weeks, predicted speedy approval of the resolution.
"The vote will be Thursday ? that's the target," Li said. Rice said the council hoped for "unanimous adoption."
The draft resolution would make it significantly harder for North Korea to move around the funds it needs to carry out its illicit programs.
It would also strengthen existing sanctions that bar North Korea from testing or using nuclear or ballistic missile technology and from importing or exporting material for these programs. It would strengthen the inspection of suspect cargo bound to and from the country.
Many analysts believe that the success of this new round of sanctions depends largely on how well China enforces them. Most of the companies and banks that North Korea is believed to work with are based in China.
The Korean People's Army Supreme Command, citing the U.S.-led push for sanctions, threatened Tuesday to cancel the armistice agreement on March 11 because of ongoing U.S.-South Korean military drills that began March 1. Without elaborating, the command also warned of "surgical strikes" meant to unify the divided Korean Peninsula and of an indigenous, "precision nuclear striking tool."
Such heated military rhetoric and threats have become increasingly common from North Korea as tensions have escalated following last December's rocket launch and Pyongyang's recent nuclear test.
The United States and other nations worry that North Korea's third nuclear test pushes it closer to its goal of gaining nuclear-armed missiles that can reach the U.S. The international community has condemned the regime's nuclear and missile efforts as threats to regional security and a drain on the resources that could go to North Korea's largely destitute people.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said President Barack Obama and the American people want to see North Korean leader Kim Jung Un engage in peace talks.
"Rather than threaten to abrogate and threaten to move in some new direction, the world would be better served ... if he would engage in a legitimate dialogue, legitimate negotiations, in order to resolve not just American concerns, but the concerns of the Japanese and the South Koreans and the Russians and the Chinese, everybody in the region," Kerry said in Doha, Qatar. "That's our hope."
Kerry also stressed that the United States will continue "to do what is necessary to defend our nation and the region together with our allies."
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is South Korean, said the North must abide by the Korean armistice.
"I am deeply concerned about that kind of very provocative rhetoric," Ban said. "I strongly urge the Pyongyang authorities to reverse course to build trust that will lead to durable peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula."
China's Li also called for increased dialogue.
"Military solutions aren't a solution," he told reporters. "We are concerned about the peace viability in the region and ... around the whole world. So that's why we encourage all the parties to sit down and have a serious talk with each other and address their differences through diplomatic means."
Rice said the proposed sanctions break new ground by targeting the illicit activities of North Korean diplomatic personnel, banking relationships and illicit cash transfers.
All countries would now be required to freeze financial transactions or services that could contribute to North Korea's nuclear or missile programs, according to a Security Council diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity because the draft has not been circulated publicly.
To get around financial sanctions, North Koreans have been carrying around large suitcases filled with cash to move illicit funds, the diplomat said. The draft resolution clarifies that financial sanctions apply to all cash transfers as well as the cash couriers.
The proposed resolution includes what the diplomat called unprecedented new travel sanctions that would require countries to expel agents working for sanctioned North Korean companies.
The draft also requires states to inspect suspect cargo on their territory and prevent any vessel that refuses an inspection from entering their ports. And a new aviation measure calls on states to deny aircraft permission to take off, land or fly over their territory if illicit cargo is suspected to be aboard, the diplomat said.
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Associated Press writers Matthew Pennington in Washington, Foster Klug and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul and Louise C. Watt in Beijing contributed to this report.
Source: http://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2013/mar/05/us-china-propose-tough-un-sanctions-for-nkorea/
Note: This interview took place the day before the Super Bowl and it was after Marvel showed us about 15 minutes of Iron Man 3.? If you?d like to know what I thought of the footage, here?s my spoiler free recap.
Question:? So watching the footage today it?s kind of interesting that they called his glove ?The Gauntlet,? is there anything going on with that?? Because there?s a Marvel thing that?s called The Infinity Gauntlet.
Feige: Well we first started meeting with Shane in spring of 2011 maybe because you came in on the mix day, I think we were mixing Captain America at Fox and we were having meetings with him there.? We knew a few of the elements that have remained.? We had pillars of we want it to be: a Tony Stark-centric story, we want to blow up his life and see how he deals with a nemesis without his suits working, get him back metaphorically to the cave with a box of scraps, like the first movie.? That has remained and carried on through, and it was one of the reasons we connected with Shane.? Because if we wanted to do a big ?It connects to The Avengers and then Nick Fury comes in and stuff,? I don?t think Shane would have been interested in that? and I don?t I don?t think he would have been the right guy for it.? But to take a Tony Stark journey and explore his character deeper than we had since the first act of the first film, he was the man.? It evolved over the next 8 or 9 months after that into basically what it is now.
From what we saw today, I thought what was really compelling about even just that brief glimpse of him was how stage managed he was.? To see the set that they had set up for him to deliver his address and see how very savvy the media set up is, and yet the character he?s playing is more archetypal and I think more arch than that.? It?s a really interesting idea, a media terrorist, or a media-age terrorist and certainly something that we can?t help but be aware of right now, how those things get used. ?Was that part of what attracted you to this notion of him?
Feige: Yes, and it sort of answers your other question, which is that the only real connective tissue we wanted from Avengers in this movie was Avengers? effect on Tony?s psyche.? This man who comes from this grounded universe ? I always say it?s grounded enough although he builds an iron suit and flies around ? the notion that Tony Stark, who is the shit and always thought of himself as top dog, now has been to outer space, nearly got killed by freaking aliens, has encountered a god that can smash him across the forest with a hammer, has encountered a guy that his father used to talk about from 1945.? It?s no mistake that we meet Tony at the beginning of this movie and he?s just building suits, putting himself in the suit, and he?s much more comfortable when he?s in the suit.? And a lot of this movie is about Tony learning to become Tony Stark again outside the armor, and he has a little help in that his house is completely destroyed.
Black: It?s almost like a sub-genre in a way of taking a comic book movie and then imposing on it what would happen in the real world if this happened.? And people have done that with ?Damage Control? or whatever, so this is just more about trying to maintain the sense of reality form the first Iron Man given that there?s a god from space.? Because if in the middle of Iron Man, when he was in the cave with Yinsen and Thor came in you would say, ?What the hell is this movie?? That doesn?t make any sense.? But now, Thor is there so what does that mean for our character?
Black: Well, he was sticking to the script, but the script wasn?t necessarily being written far in advance [laughs].? The script would be written sometimes a day or two in advance, but we?d have an outline for a scene.? Often what it was was we would have all the jokes lined up, or all the dialogue, or all the points and beats lined up, but we would play the game of plus-ing.? Which was we would say ?Okay Robert, here?s your line,? and he would go, ?Eh, okay, I can say that but I think we can beat it,? and I?d go, ?Okay we?re shooting soon, let?s plus it, what do you want?? And then we would sit and we would talk, we would try to come to something that had that shape, but that was plus-ed.? Sometimes it would Drew Pearce chiming in and we?d go, ?Okay that?s a plus,? then Robert would say something.? We tried to keep all the good stuff.? Every once and a while someone would have an idea that we didn?t like and we?d say, ?No, no that?s a minus.? It was an evolving process, but the script was always there, there was always a fallback, that was great.? We could always get one that was the script and then we could say, ?Try to plus.? It was like when I worked with Bruce Willis back then when Bruce used to do a lot of improving.? Get one that?s the script, then talk to Bruce and play.? And we?ll always have the base line, then if you can plus it, terrific.? The experience with me was that most of the time Robert could plus what was there, or the collaboration of Robert, Drew, and myself in a room for 20 minutes prior to shooting would enhance what was there and it was usually better than when we walked into that trailer.
Feige: Yeah, you know we?ve seen, through Avengers, 7 or 8 suits and we wanted to progress that in this one.? It?s part of, again, the effect Avengers had on him is that he?s tinkering even more than he did before and he?s building much more than he ever did before.? The Iron Patriot is also kind of a response to Avengers.? It?s a government rebrand of War Machine, frankly because the US government felt that they were slightly embarrassed by the events of Avengers.? These crazy heroes known as ?The Avengers? were the ones that saved the day, saved New York City, saved United States; not the government.? The government felt they needed a hero of their own, they have a military officer that has one of these suits, and they paint it red, white, and blue. They pose it next to the president and Tony sort of rolls his eyes, you saw a little bit of that today.? They want a hero of their own.? And Tony?s like, ?What do you mean, I?m a hero?? And they say ?Well you?ve been spending a lot of time in your workshop.? We want somebody we can rely on.? So that?s sort of how the Iron Patriot came about.? And, again, it?s a thing from the comics, we just thought the Iron Patriot suit looked equal parts cool and slightly goofy in the comics. ?It?s not Norman Osborne or any of that stuff obviously, but it gave us a place to go with Rhodey.? We wanted to take Rhodey and his sort of split loyalties between his friend and his duty and keep carrying that storyline through.
Black: Well the filming of it was interesting.? We decided early on, Drew and I, that I wanted to [...] hijack stuff and I wanted to have people in the sky, just falling, and Iron Man is confronted with that image and he?s got to get them out of it somehow.? The challenge was on the days we said, ?Well we?d really love to do this, but we don?t want to do just green screen, can we just toss people out of a plane?? and they said, ?Well that would probably be unethical.? But we found the Redbull skydiving team that was willing to jump out of a plane and have their backpacks erased digitally.? It?s kind of compelling, the first images you see of people falling in clothes, because people are always in jumpsuits, orange or yellow jumpsuits, and when you just see some girl in a skirt and a guy in a business suit falling it?s pretty scary.
Feige: It was definitely just Shane.