North Korea has threatened to conduct a long-range missile test and demanded an apology from the United States for labelling the country an ”outpost of tyranny”.
North Korean foreign ministry officials were quoted late on Wednesday by the official KCNA news agency as saying the country may decide to conduct a long-range missile test in the future.
The threat, reported by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, quoted the officials as saying there is ”now no binding force” for its missile test moratorium pledged in 1999 during talks between North Korea and officials from the administration of former US president Bill Clinton.
The reason cited for no longer adhering to it is because talks between the US and North Korea have been blocked since the inauguration of US President George Bush in 2001.
In another statement, Pyongyang also demanded an apology from the US for designating it an ”outpost of tyranny” and urged Washington to build a groundwork for the resumption of six-party talks aimed at ending Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme.
The statement by North Korea’s foreign ministry said Pyongyang reiterates its call for the United States to end its ”hostile policy” and ”clarify its political willingness to co-exist with the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] in peace and show it in practice”, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday.
The fresh rhetoric came as China’s chief negotiator in stalled talks on North Korea’s nuclear programme met on Thursday with his US counterpart and ambassador to South Korea, Christopher Hill, in Seoul.
Yonhap quoted a US embassy official as saying Hill and Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Wu Dawei ”had a good meeting and constructive exchange of views”.
”Both sides expressed a desire to get the six-party talks moving … and agreed that the Korean peninsula must be denuclearised and that the six-party talks are the best way to achieve this goal,” Yonhap quoted the unidentified embassy official as saying.
While the statement issued from Pyongyang earlier urged Washington to shift its foreign policy towards North Korea, it said North Korea still has the goal of denuclearising the Korean peninsula and achieving a negotiated peaceful settlement in the nuclear conflict.
Since August 2003, three rounds of talks involving the two Koreas, China, the US, Japan and Russia have taken place in Beijing without producing any breakthrough. A fourth round was scheduled for September 2004, which North Korea boycotted, citing a continuing ”hostile policy”.
Earlier at a leadership conference in Seoul, Hill said Washington has no plans to start a war with North Korea, according to Yonhap.
”The US has absolutely no intentions of invading North Korea,” Hill said. The US diplomat argued that Pyongyang would be wasting its time by pursuing what it claims is a nuclear deterrent against US aggression because Washington has no plans to attack it.
”I would say we are very much ready [to talk to North Korea], but the question is, do they [North Koreans] really want to stay out of the only process which is going forward and build a nuclear programme that really has no use?” Hill was quoted as saying.
The reclusive communist state’s launch of a ballistic missile in 1998 shocked the region as it flew over Japanese territory before landing in the Pacific Ocean.
US intelligence experts believe North Korea is working on a new version of its Taepodong 1 missile, which could be used to carry a nuclear weapon as far as the western US.
On February 10, North Korea officially declared it had already produced nuclear weapons and announced it was withdrawing from the six-nation nuclear talks. — Sapa-DPA