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DPRK to Continue Increasing Its Nuclear Deterrent Force

KCNA

Release Date: 10/03/2003

Pyongyang, October 2 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry issued a statement Thursday as regards a rumor afloat in the international arena that the nuclear facility in Nyongbyon stopped its operation and the six-way talks on the nuclear issue between the DPRK and the U.S. will resume in October or November. Dismissing this as totally groundless, he continued:

As we have already declared, the DPRK resumed nuclear activities for a peaceful purpose, i.e. it fired up the 5 MW nuclear reactor in Nyongbyon and is now stepping up the preparations for the construction of a graphite-moderated reactor. As part of it, the DPRK successfully finished the reprocessing of some 8,000 spent fuel rods.

In the subsequent period, in order to cope with the situation created by the U.S. hostile policy toward the DPRK, it made a switchover in the use of plutonium churned out by reprocessing spent fuel rods in the direction increasing its nuclear deterrent force, while putting the operation of the nuclear facility on a normal track.

We will reprocess more spent fuel rods to be churned out in an unbroken chain from the 5 MW nuclear reactor in Nyongbyon without delay when we deem it necessary.

As far as the resumption of the six-way talks is concerned, the DPRK did not make any promise with anyone at the Beijing talks and the same holds true even after the talks.

We have already expressed our official views on the results of the six-way talks held in Beijing and our comment on them on a number of occasions.

At the talks the DPRK explicitly clarified that its general goal is the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. It also advanced a reasonable proposal there, i.e. the U.S. should at least express its will to renounce its hostile policy toward the DPRK and the DPRK clarify its will to scrap its nuclear program and, at the same time, the participants in the six-way talks should agree on the principle of simultaneous actions for the solution to the nuclear issue between the DPRK and the U.S. if it is difficult for the U.S. to accept the DPRK's comprehensive and reasonable proposal for the solution of the issue on the spot.

Other participants in the talks also urged the U.S. to agree on the principle of the simultaneous actions for the settlement of the nuclear issue between the DPRK and the U.S., taking the just stand of the DPRK into consideration.

But the United Stated sidestepped all the realistic proposals and persistently pressed the DPRK to meet its demand that the DPRK "scrap its nuclear program first," before it may take up the DPRK's concerns.

Due to the U.S. unilateral and self-righteous stand and attitude the Beijing six-way talks proved fruitless, only stoking the disappointment of the international community desirous of peace and stability.

As the DPRK clarified more than once, the Beijing talks helped it clearly confirm once again that the United States did not want to co-exist peacefully with the DPRK but is keen to completely disarm and stifle it at any cost.

The DPRK's correct judgment was more clearly proved by the facts that in the wake of the six-way talks the United States spread a variety of wild rumors about the talks and, at the same time, set the International Atomic Energy Agency in motion to escalate the anti-DPRK smear campaign and steadily intensified blockade and pressure upon the DPRK under the pretexts of "maritime inspection exercises" and "flesh traffic". The United States seems to calculate that the DPRK would freeze its nuclear facilities and dismantle its nuclear deterrent force, seized with the illusion about the six-way talks, though it is well aware that the U.S. is hell-bent on gaining time as much as possible to stifle the DPRK without any political will to drop its hostile policy toward the DPRK. Nothing is more naive than to think so.

As the United States has no intention to drop its hostile policy, the DPRK will consistently maintain and increase its nuclear deterrent force as a just self-defensive means to repel the U.S. preemptive nuclear attack and ensure peace and security on the Korean peninsula and in the region according to the decision of the First Session of the 11th Supreme People's Assembly.