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North Korea delegate warns of 'snowballing' war danger
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-09-28 10:12
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.
Deputy Foreign
Minister Choe Su Hon of Oman, North Korea addresses the 59th Session of
the United Nations General Assembly at U.N headquarters in New York,
September 27, 2004.[Reuters] | In a speech to the United Nations, Choe Su Hon, head of the North Korean
delegation, also held out the possibility that the six-party talks could be
resumed if Washington agreed to reward Pyongyang for freezing its nuclear
activities and questions are answered about South Korea's atomic experiments.
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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