North Korea will seek to further increase its nuclear deterrent
capability in the face of a mounting US threat to launch a
preemptive nuclear strike against it, according to an editorial in
North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun Monday.
It said that the growing threat of such an attack on North Korea
and on non-nuclear states under the pretext of preventing terrorism
and deterring war compels North Korea to seek measures to counter
the threat.
The article stated that the US is bent on nuclear tests while
threatening non-nuclear states. “This is a shameless and
high-handed practice to make nuclear attacks on countries that are
out of their favor by developing new nuclear weapons.”
During the recent six-party talks on the Korean Peninsula
nuclear issue, the US side used the issues of enriched uranium
programs and secret sales of uranium hexafluoride to label North
Korea a “proliferator of nuclear materials.”
Washington announced the suspension of heavy oil deliveries to
North Korea in November 2002 after accusing the country of
developing an enriched uranium program. It halted construction of a
Light Water Reactor (LWR) in December 2003.
Pyongyang considers the US moves a unilateral and complete
violation of the North Korea-US Agreed Framework adopted in October
1994. Under the agreement, North Korea promised to freeze its
nuclear facilities in exchange for US help to build two LWRs and an
annual supply of 500,000 tons of oil.
Rodong Sinmun warned that the United States “had better
abandon its nuclear plot against North Korea, judging the realities
with a cool head.”
China has been working since last year to broker the six-party
talks. The first round of talks between North and South Korea,
China, the United States, Russia and Japan was held in Beijing last
August and the second in February.
At last month’s first working group meeting in Beijing,
negotiators agreed the third round of talks would be held in the
Chinese capital before the end of June.
“The third round of six-party talks is very important,” said
Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao on Saturday, adding that
the key to success lies in whether all parties concerned will be
fully prepared before the talks.
With “comparatively big differences” remaining between the
parties concerned, China hopes they will continue to take a
constructive attitude, show flexibility to the fullest, seek and
expand their common ground, narrow their differences, and work
actively to find solutions, the spokesman said.
(Xinhua News Agency, China Daily June 8, 2004)