U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) on June 28 sponsored a bipartisan bill to require global economic and political pressure to support diplomatic denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
“This legislation provides additional diplomatic tools to support the current administration’s maximum pressure campaign, which replaced the previous administration’s failed strategic patience policy, and puts real teeth behind the global effort to achieve the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the North Korean regime,” said Sen. Gardner, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy.
Sen. Gardner introduced the Leverage to Enhance Effective Diplomacy (LEED) Act, S. 2050, with U.S. Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) to impose sanctions; authorize efforts to combat Pyongyang’s widespread human rights and labor trafficking abuses; and to support the administration’s efforts to find a diplomatic solution to denuclearize the North Korea regime, according to a summary provided by Sen. Gardner’s office.
If enacted, S. 2050 also would call for North Korea to immediately return the U.S.S. Pueblo, an environmental research ship attached to Navy intelligence as a spy ship that was attacked and illegally seized in international waters in January 1968.
“Pyongyang must know that the Kim family playbook of nuclear mendacity and human rights abuses will only continue to make North Korea a neo-Stalinist relic and a global outcast,” Sen. Gardner said, referring to the country’s capital city and communist ruler, respectively.
“The intention of this bipartisan effort is to finally bring Kim Jong-Un to his senses and I hope our message is heard loud and clear in Pyongyang and around the world,” he said.
S. 2050 also would reinforce United Nations’ limits on transfers of crude oil and other restricted goods and would provide new resources for detecting sanctions evasion.
The measure has been referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for consideration.