"What they're looking for is to lift banking restrictions… So now we know what their agenda is, we know exactly why they're trying to do it and we're not going to let it happen," Haley said after a closed-door security council meeting on North Korea sanctions, as quoted by Reuters. Russia's envoy was also in attendance at the meeting.
The US Senate banking committee also passed a North Korea sanctions bill last year that has reinforced financial measures currently in place. In particular, the bill allows the US states and local governments divest from, or prohibit investment in, companies that engage in certain investment activity in North Korea.
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The UNSC and Washington have repeatedly imposed sanctions on North Korea over the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile tests.
Russia said in October it was time to consider the possibility of relaxing the international restrictions against Pyongyang amid commitment expressed by North Korea's leadership to denuclearize of the Korean Peninsula.
Pyotr Ilyichev, director of the Department of International Organizations at the Russian Foreign Ministry, said on Thursday that Moscow would raise the issue of lifting sanctions on Pyongyang at closed UN Security Council consultations on November 9.
"The United States is trying to harm all external relations that N. Korea could develop. They are trying to crush all aspects of life under their unilateral sanctions," he stressed.