U.S. indicted for spawning nuclear issue on Korean Peninsula
KCNA
Pyongyang, February 28 (KCNA) -- The Lawyers' Committee of the DPRK today indicted the U.S. for its criminal act of spawning the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula.
The indictment says:
The Bush administration's non-compliance with the commitments made between the DPRK and the U.S. for the solution to the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula is a breach of the principle of international law which calls on the signatories to a treaty to honor their commitments.
The Bush administration has not fulfilled anything it committed itself to honor in return for the DPRK's measures of declaring its moratorium on its withdrawal from the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty and keeping its graphite-moderated reactor and its related nuclear facilities frozen in line with the June 11, 1993 DPRK-U.S. joint statement and the October 21, 1994 DPRK-U.S. Agreed Framework.
Firstly, the U.S. backpedaled its commitment to provide LWR power plants with a total generating capacity of 2,000 mw by 2003 to replace the DPRK's graphite-moderated reactor and its related facilities and fled from its responsibility to make up for the loss of electricity caused by the delayed provision of the power plants.
Secondly, the U.S. is committed to annually supply 500,000 tons of heavy oil to the DPRK to make up for the loss of electricity caused by the frozen graphite-moderated reactor and its related facilities but the U.S. made an irregular delivery of it very often, thus throwing the economic development in the DPRK in confusion. The U.S. even went the lengths of completely stopping its supply from December 2002.
Thirdly, the U.S. asserted that earlier inspection should be made at the phase where only site preparation is under way for the light water reactor power plants in contravention of its commitment made under paragraph 7 of the confidential minutes subject to AF which calls for inspection for verifying the accuracy and integrity of the initial report on the nuclear substance only after a considerable portion of the light water projects is completed, ie after turbines, generators and other non-nuclear parts have been delivered.
Fourthly, it has kept applying its political and economic sanctions against the DPRK while refusing to comply with its commitments to ease trade and investment barriers including the lift of restrictions on telecommunications service and financial transactions three months after the adoption of the AF with a view to fully normalizing the political and economic relations between the two countries.
Fifthly, the U.S. drove the situation on the Korean Peninsula to the brink of war by openly posing a threat of military attack to the DPRK after singling it out as a "target of nuclear attack" in violation of its commitment to give the DPRK formal assurances against its use or threat of nukes so as to turn the Korean Peninsula into a nuclear free zone and ensure peace and security there.
Sixthly, the U.S. put the already started DPRK-U.S. talks in a total stalemate and threatened to bring the DPRK down, groundlessly terming it "part of an axis of evil" and a "rogue state," in violation of its commitments to respect the sovereignty of the other side, not to interfere in its internal affairs but have a dialogue with it on a fair and equal footing.
Seventhly, the U.S. stood in the way of the project of reconnecting the railways in the western coastal area and other inter-Korean economic cooperation in violation of its commitment to support the peaceful reunification of Korea, asserting that there should be no improved inter-Korean relations unless those materials about the nuclear issue gathered by it are verified.
The Bush administration's non-compliance with the agreements which the DPRK concluded with its preceding administration is a grave illegal act and base perfidy as it wantonly violated the principles of international law which calls for equality between the signatories to a treaty and their sincere implementation of the international commitments.
The Bush administration's refusal to honor any of the bilateral agreements not only constitutes an act of breaking international faith and betraying the other signatory but a breach of the "declaration of principles of international law to be observed by states on the basis of the UN Charter" and the Vienna Convention on the treaty law, which call for sincerely implementing commitments under an international treaty.
However, the Bush administration has worked hard to conceal its unlawful act of breaking international faith while creating the impression that Pyongyang has violated the DPRK-U.S. agreements on the basis of the recently obtained information in a bid to flee from the responsibility for spawning the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
Groundlessly accusing the DPRK of pushing forward the nuclear program after the Pyongyang visit of the special envoy of the U.S. President early in October 2002, the U.S. administration stood in the way of the DPRK-Japan talks and the inter-Korean cooperation, arguing that there will be no DPRK-U.S. talks and the DPRK-Japan and the north-south relations will be adversely affected unless Pyongyang scraps the program.
The U.S. threat of preemptive nuclear attack on the DPRK virtually annulled the joint declaration on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula issued by the north and the south of Korea in January 1992, making it meaningless for the DPRK to remain under the NPT.
The DPRK's withdrawal from the NPT was a self-defensive measure taken under the situation where the preconditions for its accession to the NPT--the U.S. should neither deploy nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula nor pose a nuclear threat to the DPRK--were not met.
Article 10 a of the NPT stipulates that "each party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from treaty if it decides that extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this treaty have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country. It shall give notice of such withdrawal to all other parties to the treaty and to the un security council three months in advance."
Therefore, it is an exercise of its right as a party to the treaty to cope with the grave situation where its supreme interests have been exposed to serious jeopardy.
The DPRK's withdrawal from the treaty was in full accord with the norms of the Vienna convention on the treaty law as Washington has not implemented its commitments under the AF but finally scrapped it.
The DPRK's withdrawal from the NPT was a final decision which took an immediate effect.
The DPRK Government declared the immediate effectuation of its withdrawal from the treaty in its January 10, 2003, statement because it lifted the moratorium on the effectuation of the withdrawal in the DPRK-U.S. Joint Statement on June 11, 1993, one day before its deadline, ie three months after the declaration of its withdrawal from the treaty on March 12 of the same year.
According to the general principle of international law on the suspension of prescription, the period of prescription does not become invalid in case it was suspended and it takes effect after the lapse of the remaining period of prescription since the lift of suspension.
Therefore, the day after the DPRK lifted the temporary suspension of the effectuation of its withdrawal from the NPT becomes the last day of the three months stipulated in the article for the withdrawal and also becomes the day the DPRK's withdrawal from the NPT takes its final effect.
As the DPRK's withdrawal from the NPT took effect, there remains no longer any legally binding relations between the DPRK and the international atomic energy agency as it nullified all the rights and duties under the treaty including the safeguards agreement that had existed between the two sides.
The Bush administration, however, put in motion the IAEA, which has no legal mandate to discuss the DPRK's "nuclear issue," to internationalize the issue and create an atmosphere of international pressure upon the DPRK.
The U.S. should unconditionally accept the DPRK proposal for concluding a non-aggression treaty for the settlement of the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
Peace and stability have not settled on the Korean Peninsula but the situation there is getting tenser with each passing day. The U.S. is entirely to blame for this.
The nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula should be settled by way of holding the DPRK-U.S. dialogue on an equal footing and by concluding a non-aggression treaty between them in view of the circumstances of its emergence, the true nature of the crisis and the responsibility for it.
The DPRK-U.S. non-aggression treaty should be an international treaty with strong assurances as it should be ratified by the DPRK's Supreme People's Assembly and both houses of U.S. Congress, the highest law-making institutions in both countries.
The DPRK's proposal for concluding the treaty is aimed to provide a legal binding force to control and prevent the U.S. from using nukes and posing a threat of military attack to it.
It is not a leverage to get a sort of reward nor is it a temporary expedient so-called "brinkmanship tactics."
The U.S. should immediately respond to the DPRK's proposal for concluding a non-aggression treaty, instead of trying to flee from its responsibility for spawning the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula from an international legal point of view.
It is the hope of the Lawyers' Committee of the DPRK that the governments, judicial organizations and lawyers of the world would extend support and solidarity to the DPRK Government's principled stand to find a fair settlement of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula.
