U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Thursday urged China to use its leverage as North Korea's principal supplier of oil to press the isolated nation into reconsidering its development of nuclear weapons.
The Trump administration sought an embargo on oil imports to North Korea at the U.N. Security Council this week in response to the North's most powerful nuclear test to date. But opposition from China and Russia forced the U.N. to approve weaker measures, although it did ban textile exports, an important source of its revenue for the North.
Tillerson said it was going to be "very difficult" to get China to consent to an embargo against its neighbor, but he still urged China as a "great country and a world power" to use its leverage as the supplier of virtually all North Korea's oil.
