/ 17 January 2009

North Korea may retain nuclear capability

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry on Saturday said the communist state might retain a nuclear capability as long as it feels threatened by the United States.

A spokesperson for the ministry also stressed the normalisation of ties with Washington would not automatically mean Pyongyang would give up its perceived right to have nuclear weapons.

”Even if the DPRK-US diplomatic relations become normalised, our status as a nuclear-armed state will never change as long as the US nuclear threat to us remains, even to the slightest degree,” a spokesperson for the ministry was quoted as saying by Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency.

He said it was a ”miscalculation” for the US to consider the normalisation of ties a reward for the communist state abandoning nuclear weapons.

”What we earnestly desire is not the normalisation of DPRK-US ties but the strengthening of nuclear deterrence in every possible way,” the spokesperson added.

”We have made nuclear weapons in order not to seek the normalisation of ties with the US or economic assistance but to protect us from US nuclear threats.

”We can live without the normalisation of ties with the US but we cannot survive without the nuclear deterrence.”

On Tuesday, Pyongyang vowed not to give up its nuclear weapons until the United States drops its ”hostile” policy and establishes diplomatic relations.

The nuclear dispute was ”caused by the US hostile policy toward [North] Korea and the subsequent nuclear threat,” the Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on Tuesday.

”There will be no such case in 100 years’ time that we will hand over our nuclear weapons first without the fundamental settlement of the US hostile policy toward Korea and its nuclear threat.”

The two statements reaffirmed current policy but came as the Obama administration is due to take power in Washington next week.

North Korea in 2007 signed a six-nation disarmament pact that calls for the scrapping of its nuclear weapons in return for aid, normalised relations with the United States and Japan and a formal peace pact on the Korean peninsula.

It is disabling its nuclear plants under the latest phase of the pact but has not started negotiations on the final phase, which would involve the surrender of weapons and normalised relations.

The talks group the two Koreas, the US, China, Russia and Japan.

The North frequently demands verification that US nuclear weapons have been withdrawn from South Korea. The US said this was done in the early 1990s. — AFP

 

AFP