The report, by a panel of U.N. experts into sanctions violations by North Korea and intended only to be seen by the Security Council, details how a dummy corporation, a front for North Korea’s arms dealing ventures, attempted to send two shipments to a Syrian government agency responsible for the country's chemical weapons program. KCNA/via REUTERS

The report by a panel of independent U.N. experts, which was submitted to the U.N. Security Council earlier this month and seen by Reuters on Monday, gave no details on when or where the interdictions occurred or what the shipments contained. According to Reuters, the report said: “The [security council] panel is investigating reported prohibited chemical, ballistic missile and conventional arms cooperation between Syria and the DPRK [North Korea]. “Two member states interdicted shipments destined for Syria,” the report stated. Another member state informed the panel that it had reasons to believe that the goods were part of a KOMID contract with Syria.”



North Korea and the Trump administration have been embroiled in a tense war of words over Pyongyang’s nuclear programme, with both sides accusing each other of making military threats against each other. Details of the U.N. findings, first reported by Reuters, found officials from Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation {KOMID) had sent a pair of shipments of unknown contents to members of Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Centre or SSRC. KOMID has repeatedly trafficked in materials associated with ballistic missile development and other conventional arms programs, and was blacklisted by the U.N. security council as a result of those activities, Reuters reports. “The consignees were Syrian entities designated by the European Union and the United States as front companies for Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC), a Syrian entity identified by the Panel as cooperating with KOMID in previous prohibited item transfers,” according to the report. North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its ballistic missile and nuclear programs and the Security Council has ratcheted up the measures in response to five nuclear weapons tests and four long-range missile launches. Syria had agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013 under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States but reports have claimed that the Assad regime is in violation of the U.N. backed deal, continuing to manufacture chemical weapons at a site near the Syrian capital Damascus and in regime-held Hama province. The UN has previously said attempts to bypass sanctions had been stymied

Jerry Smith, a former chemical weapons inspector for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said: “In 2013 a North Korean ship was intercepted in the Panama canal.
Two North Korean shipments to a Syrian government agency of its chemical weapons program were intercepted in the past 6 months, according to a confidential United Nations report on violations of North Korea's sactions.