North Korea has not halted its nuclear missile programme and is trying to sell weapons to the Middle East and Africa, a UN report has found.

The isolated nation is also defying sanctions and continues to cooperate militarily with Syria although it is banned, according to the confidential 149-page report seen by Reuters.

"[North Korea] has not stopped its nuclear and missile programmes and continued to defy Security Council resolutions through a massive increase in illicit ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum products, as well as through transfers of coal at sea during 2018," it said.

Among the groups in the Middle East and Africa North Korea is trying to sell weapons to is Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels, it said.

And despite a textile export ban, the North exported more than $100m (£77m) in goods between October 2017 and March 2018 to China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey and Uruguay.


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Image: Kim Jong Un regime continues to defy UN resolutions, says the report

Independent experts monitoring the implementation of UN sanctions over the past six months submitted the report to the UN Security Council's North Korea sanctions committee late on Friday in the US.

The North Korean mission to the UN did not respond to a request for a comment.

The report was submitted as Russia and China suggested discussing the easing of sanctions following US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's Singapore meeting in June.

Mr Kim had pledged to work towards denuclearisation.

The US and other council members said sanctions must be strictly enforced until Pyongyang acts on its promise.

However the UN experts said illegal ship-to-ship fuel transfers in international waters had "increased in scope, scale and sophistication."

Image: Kim Jong Un met Donald Trump in June

They said North Koreans are turning off their ships' tracking systems, physically disguising boats and using smaller vessels to go undetected.

In a further attack on sanctions North Korean ballistic missile technicians visited Syria in 2011, 2016 and 2017, the report added.

Experts said they were shown a letter from 13 July, 2016, from a country which was not identified, inviting the North Koreans to meet in Damascus "to discuss the issue of the transfer of technology and other matters of mutual interest."

In the report the experts heavily criticised North Korea's "deceptive practices", saying they were systematically undermining the effectiveness of financial sanctions.

At the same time as the report's contents were released US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was at an Asian security forum in Singapore where he said the US has new, credible reports that Russia is violating UN sanctions by allowing joint ventures with North Korean companies.

He said Moscow has been issuing new permits for North Korean workers.

Image: Mike Pompeo warned Russia and China not to renege on north Korean sanctions

In a warning to the Kremlin as well as China and other countries, he said the White House would take any sanctions violations "very seriously" as they could reduce pressure on the North to abandon its nuclear weapons.

He noted that the UN Security Council, which includes Russia and China, had voted unanimously in favour of the sanctions.

"I want to remind every nation that has supported these resolutions that this is a serious issue and something we will discuss with Moscow," Mr Pompeo said.

"We expect the Russians and all countries to abide to the UN Security Council resolutions and enforce sanctions on North Korea.

"Any violation that detracts from the world's goal of finally, fully denuclearizing North Korea would be something that America would take very seriously."