North Korea today withdrew from the global nuclear arms control treaty, in a move certain to heighten tension over its nuclear development efforts.
Pyongyang said it would devote its nuclear activities to peaceful ends and would not build weapons ”at this stage”.
South Korea has called an emergency meeting of its national security council and President Kim Dae-jung said dialogue and patience were needed. Japan has demanded North Korea reverse the decision. There was no immediate comment from the United States or China, one of Pyongyang’s few friends. A Russian foreign ministry representative said Moscow was concerned.
Though the withdrawal was dramatic, the withdrawal was partly symbolic. North Korea was already violating the 1968 nuclear treaty by secretly pursuing nuclear weapons development, and by flouting UN safeguards at its nuclear facilities.
Quitting the treaty could signal that North Korea plans to push ahead with its nuclear armament, or that it is trying to pressure the United States into concessions through brinkmanship. It has threatened to leave the treaty before, only to change its mind.
The announcement came as the governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, a former UN ambassador, became a surprise intermediary at a two-hour meeting with two North Korean diplomats. Neither side commented to reporters and were expected to meet again today.
North Korea blamed what it said was US aggression for its decision to withdraw from the treaty.
”We can no longer remain bound to the NPT, allowing the country’s security and the dignity of our nation to be infringed upon,” the North Korean government said in a statement carried on KCNA, its official news agency.
”Though we pull out of the NPT, we have no intention of producing nuclear weapons and our nuclear activities at this stage will be confined only to peaceful purposes such as the production of electricity,” KCNA said.
In 1993, North Korea also announced that it was withdrawing from the treaty, but suspended the decision three months later and entered talks with the United States.
The treaty says a nation that withdraws from the pact must give notification three months in advance. North Korea, however, said it was withdrawing immediately.
The crisis escalated last month when Pyongyang expelled UN inspectors at nuclear facilities that US officials say were used to make one or two bombs in the 1990s.
North Korea said it was reactivating the facilities, and experts say Pyongyang could make several more bombs within six months if it extracts weapons-grade plutonium from spent fuel rods at the Yongbyon site.
North Korea wants Washington to sign a non-aggression treaty. The United States has said it will talk with the North but has demanded that it ”promptly and verifiably” dismantle its nuclear weapons programmes.
In its statement, North Korea denounced a January 6 statement by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency that urged it to readmit its inspectors and allow the Yongbyon site to be monitored. The facilities were frozen under a 1994 deal with Washington. ”The withdrawal from the NPT is a legitimate self-defensive measure taken against the US moves to stifle” North Korea, the North’s news agency said.
North Korea has repeatedly accused the United States of plotting to invade it, and has said it has the right to develop weapons for its self-defence. However, it has never publicly said that it has a nuclear weapons programme.
Japan demanded the North respond quickly to growing fears over its weapons intentions.
”Our nation will strongly demand from North Korea a quick retraction of its statement and a positive response to solving the nuclear weapons problem,” the Japanese chief cabinet secretary, Yasuo Fukuda, said in Tokyo.
North Korea joined the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 1985. It suspended its 1993 decision to withdraw from the treaty amid tension over its suspected nuclear weapons programme.
The crisis was defused a year later when North Korea agreed to freeze its facilities at Yongbyon under an energy deal with the United States. Those facilities are the focus on the new crisis.
The 1968 treaty is considered a cornerstone in the effort to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
Only four other countries — Cuba, India, Israel and Pakistan — are not signatories, though Cuba is a member of a treaty establishing a nuclear-free zone in Latin America.
In the United States, former diplomat Richardson met Han Song Ryol, North Korea’s deputy UN ambassador, and the first secretary, Mun Jong Chol, at the governor’s mansion in Santa Fe for what was billed as a three-hour working dinner. The governor said he planned a second meeting today. – Guardian Unlimited Â