Punishing North Korea with additional sanctions would be “counterproductive and dangerous,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday.
According to an online statement on the Foreign Ministry’s website, Lavrov and Tillerson discussed North Korea’s latest missile launch, Syria, and the Persian Gulf.
The United States and Russia agreed Pyongyang’s missile launch represented another serious violation of UN Security Council resolutions, while Lavrov urged the United States from taking military action against North Korea that could lead to “unpredictable consequences,” the statement said.
On Tuesday, in defiance of warnings from the United States, North Korea launched a ballistic missile which passed over Japan. International sanctions against North Korea began in 2006 over the isolated country’s nuclear ambitions.
The latest round of U.S. sanctions passed in August would deprive the country of as much as one-third of its $3 billion annual export revenue, by targeting the country’s major industries, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said.