US had blacklisted Chinese shipping companies on Thursday
‘Trump likes Kim and doesn’t think these are necessary’
Donald Trump has announced that he is ordering the withdrawal of recently announced
North Korea-related sanctions imposed by the US treasury department.
“It was announced today by the US Treasury that additional large-scale Sanctions would be added to those already existing Sanctions on North Korea,” Trump said on Twitter. “I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions!”
It was not immediately clear what sanctions Trump was referring to. There were no new US sanctions on North Korea announced on Friday but on Thursday the
United States blacklisted two Chinese shipping companies that it said helped North Korea evade sanctions over its nuclear weapons program.
The
White House spokeswoman, Sarah Sanders, did not specify which sanctions Trump spoke of but said: “President Trump likes Chairman
Kim Jong-un and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary.”
The sanctions on the Chinese shippers were the first since the second US-North Korea summit broke down last month.
On Thursday, White House national security adviser John Bolton praised the US treasury for taking “important action” to stop North Korea’s illicit shipping activities. “Everyone should take notice and review their own activities to ensure they are not involved in North Korea’s sanctions evasion,” he tweeted.
Hours after the sanctions announcement, North Korea on Friday pulled out of a liaison office with the South, a major setback for Seoul.
North Korea said it was quitting the joint liaison office set up in September in the border city of Kaesong after a historic summit between Kim Jong-un and South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, early last year.