China has agreed to a plan to beef up a U.N. sanctions committee on North Korea and unveil the panel’s new blacklist in another apparent swipe at Pyongyang, a news report said Monday.

With its veto power, Beijing has long strived to dilute international calls for tougher penalties against its defiant ally in the face of missile launches and nuclear tests.

Yonhap News cited an unnamed U.N. source as saying that there had been a “very meaningful shift” in China’s position toward sanctions against North Korea.

Under the plan, the U.N. Security Council’s North Korea sanctions committee will raise the number of members of its expert group by one. It is expected to disclose an additional list of North Korean individuals and entities that will be subject to sanctions as early as this week, the source said.

“The two issues could not be made impossible without China’s approval,” the source was quoted as saying.

Fifteen UNSC members participate in the committee, under which an expert panel operates with seven people from five permanent UNSC countries and South Korea and Japan.

The multinational agency’s Iran sanctions committee already includes eight specialists, the source added. The new expert in the North Korea panel will likely come from Africa.

In May 2011, the UNSC failed to adopt the panel’s annual report due to China’s opposition.

But the perceived about-face marks Beijing’s latest bout of pressure on its political and economic beneficiary to refrain from ratcheting up tensions and return to dialogue.

Beijing has also severed transactions with Pyongyang’s main foreign exchange bank, after joining the U.S. in March in levying the U.N.’s strongest sanctions yet on the communist country over its third nuclear test.

During their first meeting earlier this month, Presidents Xi Jinping and Barack Obama reaffirmed efforts for the denuclearization of the peninsula, which is forecast to top the agenda for this week’s South Korea-China summit in Beijing.

“While in China, I will make efforts to help North Korea come out to a forum of sincere dialogue as demanded by the international community, by substantiating cooperation with China to reach the goal of denuclearizing North Korea,” President Park Geun-hye said at a meeting of chief presidential secretaries on Monday.

Following a months-long torrent of nuclear threats and shows of force, Pyongyang appears to be stepping up its peace offensive by proposing talks first with Seoul and then Washington.

The allies, however, have been calling on the regime to prove its sincerity with preemptive steps toward denuclearization before returning to the negotiating table.

By Shin Hyon-hee
(heeshin@heraldcorp.com)