U.S. House seeks to declare North Korea a state sponsor of terrorism

PanARMENIAN.Net - Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives are pushing to have North Korea designated as a state sponsor of terrorism, alongside Iran, Sudan and Syria, eight years after it was taken off the list to smooth the way for aid-for-disarmament negotiations that collapsed soon after, the Associated Press reports.

The U.S. treats North Korea as a pariah for its record on many issues: nuclear weapons, human rights, cyberattacks and money laundering among them. But not for terrorism.

A bill approved by a House committee Thursday, June 16 calls for the State Department to report to Congress within 90 days on whether a list of purported acts by North Korea, including assassinations of dissidents and weapons sales to militant groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, constitute support for international terrorism. It's the most serious effort yet by lawmakers to get North Korea redesignated, but the legislation still has to clear the full House and Senate, and there's little time left in the congressional calendar for passage.

Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the committee's top-ranking Democrat, said the bill would press the administration to conduct a review of the evidence against North Korea. He described the North as "reprehensible" but added, "there's a fine line as to whether they may or may not be a state sponsor of terrorism," AP says.

If North Korea was redesignated, it would not necessarily have an economic impact. North Korea is already sanctioned to the hilt — including tough new U.S. measures imposed after a nuclear test explosion in January. The effectiveness of sanctions also requires cooperation from China, the North's main trading partner.

But a terror designation would intensify Pyongyang's isolation and further entrench a U.S. policy of cranking up the pressure on Kim Jong Un's government until it agrees to restart negotiations about denuclearization.