North Korea threatened on Saturday to double the size of its nuclear deterrent and the United States rejected its conditions for a resumption of talks, leaving the two nations in a dangerous stalemate.
A day after North Korea set three conditions for returning to six-party talks on its nuclear programmes, warned Washington to drop its “hostile policy” aimed at unseating the communist leadership or face a more potent atomic arsenal.
“If the United States persistently pursues its confrontational hostile policy towards the DPRK (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) from the viewpoint of escapism, it will only compel the DPRK to double its deterrent force,” the main newspaper in North Korea said in a commentary published by the official KCNA news agency.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is in the region seeking to revive negotiations, said the demands could be addressed in the six-party talks, which also include China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.
“Any outstanding issues that are holding up the progress should be dealt with in the context of the (six-party) discussions, not by press statements or rhetoric going back and forth,” Powell told reporters on his plane en route to Tokyo.
The United States has been leading slow-moving negotiations since the latest nuclear crisis erupted two years ago when its diplomats said North Korea admitted it was running a covert uranium enrichment programme. Pyongyang has since denied this.
Pyongyang has suggested Powell’s trip is merely to keep up the appearance during President George W.Bush’s re-election campaign that he is committed to the six-party talks.
Washington suspects Pyongyang is stalling to wait for the outcome of the Nov. 2 election because Kerry favours bilateral talks, which North Korea hopes would lead to more concessions.
** North Korean commentary on Saturday said the root cause of the hostile US policy was that Washington wanted to retain military influence in the region.**
The United States holds an international naval exercise in the region next week aimed at stifling any North Korean proliferation.
In a separate report on Saturday, KCNA listed what it said was South Korea’s secret nuclear weapons developments over decades. Seoul denies having such a programme.
Pyongyang said South Korea was seeking to build a nuclear submarine as part of what it calls Seoul’s nuclear-arms scheme and urged it to drop the plan immediately, South Korea’s Yonhap News reported on Saturday.
North Korea vows to boost N-deterrent
Tiny North Korea giving the middle finger to the US yet again just goes to show a poor less military equipped North Korea calls the shots when negotiating with so called super power. Pakistan on the other hand is bending over backwards with musharaff getting his toungue even browner doing everything under the sun for the US and it still gets slapped around around like a little boy and told what to do and when to do it!
The terrorists = Islamic world?