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N. Korea to UN: Ignore the United States
VOA News
27 Jun 2003, 22:23 UTC

North Korea is urging the U.N. Security Council to ignore U.S. calls for condemnation of Pyongyang's nuclear program and instead take a more neutral stance.

In a letter to the Security Council, Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun accuses Washington of threatening North Korea. Washington is pressing the Council to demand that North Korea dismantle its nuclear weapons program.

Mr. Paek says the United Nations cannot let one nation - the United States - determine what is best for the world. North Korea has also said recently that it would consider any punitive Security Council action to be a declaration of war. U.S. officials have repeatedly said Washington wants to settle the matter peacefully, but they have not ruled out military action.

In Tokyo Friday, U.S. Ambassador Howard Baker said the patience of the international community over the nuclear standoff could soon run out. In a Tokyo speech to the Japanese Research Institute, Mr. Baker said the United States will pull out of an internationally-supervised nuclear power project in North Korea if Pyongyang keeps building nuclear arms. The power project has been on hold since late last year, when the United States said North Korea had acknowledged having a secret nuclear weapons program.

Meanwhile, Japan's Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi told reporters it is too early to pull the plug on the energy project. She said Tokyo wants to continue working toward a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue.

The head of the multi-lateral consortium overseeing the reactor project, Charles Kartman, is in Tokyo for meetings about the delayed construction. The other major nation involved - South Korea - has called for the project to continue.

North Korea on Friday sharply criticized a U.S. plan to re-deploy troops on the Korean peninsula. The official Rodong Sinmun newspaper called the redeployment plans a strategy for pre-emptive attack on North Korea.

The U.S. Defense Department announced earlier this month it would move some of its forces back from the border separating North and South Korea. It said the move would create a more flexible U.S. presence on the peninsula.

Some information for this report provided by AP and Reuters.