• Military

• WMD Menu                           

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

KCNA Urges U.S. to Lift Sanctions against DPRK for Resumption of Six-Party Talks

Korean Central News Agency of DPRK via Korea News Service (KNS)

    Pyongyang, January 17 (KCNA) -- The United States is letting loose a string of base outcries to shift the responsibility for the delayed second phase of the fifth round of the six-party talks on to the DPRK from the outset of the year. Officials of the U.S. administration vied with each other to assert that the U.S. is making efforts to resume the six-party talks and that pursuit of illegal activities of north Korea and the six-party talks are totally different from each other and these activities have nothing to do with the talks. By these outbursts it means that the U.S. is making a lot of efforts for the resumption of the six-party talks but the DPRK is laying obstacles to the progress of the talks.
    This is like a thief crying "Stop the thief!"
    It is base, indeed, for the U.S. to try to lay hurdles in the way of the six-party talks through unjust sanctions and pressure and lay the responsibility for the delayed talks at the DPRK's door. The U.S. sanctions and pressure upon the DPRK are the main obstacle to the progress of the talks.
    As the U.S. financial sanctions are an issue directly linked with the talks, it is unthinkable for the DPRK to negotiate the nuclear issue with the party seeking to isolate and stifle it while being exposed to sanctions.
    The financial sanctions against the DPRK are little short of an act of suffocating the DPRK to bring down its system and contrary to the purport of the joint statement of the six-party talks which calls for mutual respect and co-existence.
    It is necessary to respect each other and co-exist in peace and take steps for building confidence and normalizing the relations with a view to denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. This is the basic spirit of the September 19 joint statement.
    Pressure and sanctions are incompatible with peaceful co-existence.
    The U.S. wanton violation of the joint statement is further bedeviling the hostile relations between the DPRK and the U.S. as it is nothing helpful to establishing the relations of confidence. If the U.S. truly wants to resume the talks, there is no reason to refuse to remove the hurdles lying in the way of the talks. It is proper for the party chiefly to blame for having deadlocked the talks to fulfil its commitment before any party else and this would be a practical step to resume the talks. Of late the international community is paying due attention to the fact that the U.S. high-handed policy is adversely affecting the process to settle the nuclear issue of other countries.
    Even U.S. media comment that the Bush administration's smear campaign against north Korea and its refusal to hold high-level talks on financial sanctions against it and the like do not stand to reason.
    The U.S. refusal to lift sanctions against the DPRK and its escalated pressure, threat and blackmail against it only compel the latter to take tougher countermeasures.
    If the U.S. truly wants to resume the six-party talks, it should lift, among other things, the sanctions against the DPRK, the factor blocking the resumption of the talks.