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North Korea delegate warns of 'snowballing' war danger
North Korea's chief delegate to the United Nations General Assembly said on Monday the danger of war on the Korean peninsula is "snowballing" and accused the United States of destroying the basis for negotiations on Pyongyang's nuclear program.
Choe dismissed as "only guessing and rumor" signs that Pyongyang may be preparing a ballistic missile test.
He told a rare press conference North Korea had last tested a missile in 1998 and said it was obvious "we have the capability to produce various kinds of missiles...We don't have anything to hide on that."
North and South Korea have been divided since the Korean War ended in 1953 and Choe said "the danger of war is snowballing owing to the U.S. extreme moves to isolate and stifle the DPRK and threats of preemptive strikes against it."
North Korea's formal name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Choe repeated claims the North had weaponized the fuel from 8,000 reprocessed spent fuel rods, which experts say could boost its nuclear cache from one or two bombs to eight bombs.
He charged that South Korea could not have carried out recently revealed unauthorized nuclear experiments in 1982 and 2000 without U.S. assistance and said this must be clarified.
"It could not be possible that South Korea conducts such experiments without U.S. technology and without the approval of the U.S.," he said.
China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States are trying to persuade the North to scrap its nuclear program in exchange for security guarantees and energy aid.
The latest in a series of six-way talks had been planned for this month, but North Korea said last month talks with the United States were pointless.
In his U.N. speech, Choe accused the United States of "further intensifying its hostile acts against the DPRK in a more undisguised way, even openly announcing there would be no reward" if Pyongyang froze its nuclear programs.
For these and other reasons, "the basis of negotiations ... has been completely destroyed," he said.
Choe repeated the North's willingness to freeze its nuclear programs but said "this is possible only when the U.S. itself rewards (Pyongyang) for our freeze."
The Bush administration has vowed it will not reward Pyongyang for halting a nuclear program that it promised to stop in a 1994 agreement that it has since reneged on.
However the administration agreed to provide the North with fuel and food.
Seoul raised eyebrows when it recently disclosed that its scientists enriched a small amount of uranium in 2000 and separated plutonium in 1982 -- activities forbidden to South Korea as a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is investigating Seoul's nuclear experiments. |
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