By Arshad Mohammed and Nancy Waitz
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States said on Tuesday it had cracked down on companies involved in North Korea's suspected missile proliferation and in purchases of equipment that could be used in a nuclear weapons program.
In a move to enlist China in tightening the screws on North Korea, the United States said Philip Goldberg, its envoy for coordinating arms and other sanctions against North Korea under a recent U.N. resolution, would leave for Beijing on Tuesday.
The steps are part of a push to get tough with North Korea, which conducted its second nuclear test on May 25 and which has ceased carrying out a 2005 agreement to abandon its nuclear programs in exchange for economic and diplomatic benefits.
The Treasury and State Departments said they had targeted Iran's Hong Kong Electronics and North Korea's Namchongang Trading Corp under an executive order that would freeze their U.S. assets and bar U.S. firms from dealing with them.
The move appeared aimed at isolating the companies from the U.S. financial and commercial systems and, by extension, from other countries' banks and corporations who may resist doing business with them out of fear of falling afoul of U.S. laws.
It was not immediately clear whether either company actually has any U.S. assets that could be frozen.
The U.S. Treasury said that it had targeted Hong Kong Electronics, which is located in Kish Island, Iran, because it had transferred millions of dollars of proliferation-related funds to North Korea from Iran.
'FRONT COMPANIES'
"North Korea uses front companies like Hong Kong Electronics and a range of other deceptive practices to obscure the true nature of its financial dealings, making it nearly impossible for responsible banks and governments to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate North Korean transactions," Stuart Levey, undersecretary of the treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in the statement.
The State Department said Namchongang is a Pyongyang-based "nuclear-related company" that has been involved in the purchase of aluminium tubes and other equipment "suitable for a uranium enrichment program since the late 1990s."
It said Goldberg, the newly named U.S. coordinator for the implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, would leave Washington on Tuesday with a U.S. team for talks in Beijing on Thursday and Friday on enforcing U.N. sanctions.
The resolution, which passed June 12, bans the export of all weapons by North Korea -- which Washington says will cut off a significant source of funds for Pyongyang. It also bans all financial transactions with North Korea that could contribute to its nuclear or ballistic missile programs.
The Obama administration is eager to ensure the sanctions are actually enforced -- particularly by China, the North's largest trading partner -- unlike those passed after North Korea's first nuclear test in October 2006.
China's state-run media has taken a somewhat harsher tone towards North Korea in recent weeks, a development that analysts said may presage a tougher stance towards the reclusive state on China's doorstep and narrow the policy gap with Washington.
Analysts say North Korea is believed to have accumulated enough fissile material from its plutonium program to build between eight and 10 atomic bombs, although they acknowledge that these are hazy estimates.
Uranium enrichment, which would give it a second path to a bomb, is a process that can produce fuel for nuclear power plants or for nuclear weapons.
South Korea's defence minister said the North appears to be enriching uranium, adding that such a program was easier to hide than its long-standing plutonium-based activities.
(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley in Beijing and by Jon Herskovitz in Seoul; Editing by Philip Barbara)
