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Spokesman for DPRK Foreign Ministry on Its Nuclear Deterrent Force

KCNA

    Pyongyang, October 18 (KCNA) -- The daily pronounced hostile policy of the Bush administration to stifle the DPRK and its increasing threat of preemptive nuclear attack compels the DPRK to opt for maintaining and increasing its nuclear deterrent force as means for just self-defence and consolidating the defense power of the country to the maximum. A spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry said this in a statement today. He said:
    It is 9 years since the DPRK-U.S. Agreed Framework was published on October 21, 1994. But the Agreed Framework remains a dead document as it was completely ditched by the U.S.
    The core issue of the AF is the U.S. commitment to provide the DPRK with light water reactors in return for the latter's freeze of its nuclear facilities.
    He cited facts to prove how systematically the U.S. has violated the AF.
    Recalling that the U.S. policy to stifle the DPRK was carried into extremes after the emergence of the Bush administration, he went on:
    The Bush administration openly refused to recognize the entity of the DPRK even before sitting with it. Moreover, it listed the DPRK as part of an "axis of evil" and a target of its preemptive nuclear attack, thus pushing the DPRK-U.S. relations, which seemed to positively improve, to the phase of catastrophe and completely scrapping the main articles of the AF.
    The U.S. designation of the DPRK as part of an "axis of evil" and a target of its preemptive nuclear attack and its open call for "regime change" are not only an insult to and a blatant interference in the internal affairs of an independent sovereign state but a unilateral hostile act of grossly violating and completely nullifying the AF which called on the two sides to respect each other's sovereignty, build mutual confidence and improve the bilateral relations.
    When Kelly visited the DPRK as a special envoy of the U.S. president in October 2002, he asserted without any evidence that the DPRK has pushed forward the "enriched uranium program" to produce nuclear weapons in violation of the DPRK-U.S. Agreed Framework. And he went to the lengths of openly threatening and pressuring the DPRK that if it does not stop such program, the U.S. would not have any kind of dialogue with it and the relations between the DPRK and Japan and those between the north and the south of Korea, in particular, would face a catastrophic crisis.
    The U.S. has increased its nuclear pressure upon the DPRK, escalating its row over its fiction of "enriched uranium program." On November 14, 2002 it decided to stop even the supply of heavy fuel oil to the DPRK, thus nullifying the only article of the AF, which had been implemented.
    The DPRK declares that it has the legitimate right to receive from the U.S. compensation for the loss according to the internationally recognized laws and practice and, more importantly, in line with the provision which calls for taking measures in the event of noncompliance with the DPRK-U.S. agreement and Article 16 of the Agreement on the provision of LWRs and will take measures in this regard.
    Now it is as clear as noonday that the U.S. is set to seize the DPRK by force, through high-handed actions and by military means.
    It would be the biggest mistake for the U.S. to calculate that the DPRK would sit idle and disarm itself, taken in by Washington's trick.
    When an appropriate time comes, the DPRK's increased nuclear deterrent force will be proved in practice.
    The U.S. can never evade its responsibility for having unilaterally scrapped the DPRK-U.S. Agreed Framework and blocked the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.