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NKorea accuses US of cooking up information

SEOUL: North Korea’s state television has claimed that the United States raised tension on the Korean peninsula by concocting information on the North’s alleged nuclear program.

The North’s Korean Central Broadcasting Station (KCBS) said in a program late Wednesday that Washington distorted the contents of a discussion between North Korean officials and US envoy James Kelly during talks in Pyongyang in October.

Kelly has said he extracted an admission that Pyongyang was running a nuclear weapons program when he confronted North Korean officials with evidence the communist state was enriching uranium for nuclear weapons in violation of a 1994 arms control deal.

But KCBS, monitored here by Yonhap news agency, insisted that Pyongyang had simply asserted its right to possess nuclear weapons if the United States violated the 1994 deal under which Pyongyang pledged to freeze nuclear weapons development.

“We just explained our basic position that we are entitled to possess nuclear weapons if the United States violates their nuclear agreement and forces the country into a nuclear war,” it said.“However, Bush’s administration made use of this to argue we are developing nuclear weapons. Such a fabrication will not be accepted,” KCBS said.

It said North Korea was exercising its “utmost self-control and patience to carry out our duty even under today’s grave situation.”

Similar claims were made by some analysts and government officials in Seoul but Kelly has strongly defended his account.

“I gave them the full fidelity version of what I was told in North Korea and I did so within 24 hours of when I was told that,” he said at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Mexico last month. Washington has accused Pyongyang of violating the 1994 deal under which the Stalinist country agreed to freeze nuclear activities in return for 500,000 tonnes of US fuel oil every year and two light-water reactors.

The United States and its allies have decided to suspend oil deliveries to North Korea from December until it pledged to dismantle its nuclear program.

US officials say North Korea has a secret uranium-based nuclear weapons program.

In response, Pyongyang has said it will resolve “US security concerns” if Washington agreed first to sign a non-aggression pact with the reclusive communist state. Washington has rejected the demand. —AFP

...demanded visit from Bush

TOKYO: North Korea, in talks with a US diplomat last month, had demanded a visit by US President George W. Bush as one of the conditions for abandoning its nuclear weapons programme, a Japanese daily reported on Thursday.

The Mainichi Shimbun, quoting senior US officials, said in its evening edition that the North Koreans had made the proposal to US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly when he visited Pyongyang in early October. North Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Kang Sok-ju told Kelly that in addition to a Bush visit, the signing of a non-aggression treaty, a peace accord, and the lifting of all economic sanctions were North Korea’s conditions for giving up its nuclear weapons programme, the paper said.

The Mainichi said Kelly was upset at the proposal, and left the negotiating table saying: “If North Korea thinks that the United States will agree to a new framework because it has broken the Agreed Framework, then it is totally mistaken.”

Pyongyang shocked the world by admitting to Kelly that it had a secret uranium enrichment project for making nuclear weapons in violation of a 1994 pact, known as the Agreed Framework.

Under the deal, North Korea had agreed to freeze its nuclear weapons programme in exchange for oil shipments and two light-water reactors that cannot be easily used to produce weapons-grade nuclear material.

Following the shock admission, the United States and its allies including South Korea and Japan, decided this month to suspend the fuel oil shipments starting from December.

North Korea has lashed out at the move, calling it a “wanton violation” by the United States of the 1994 agreement, and saying that unless Washington agreed to a non-aggression treaty, the nuclear issue could not be solved. —Reuters

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