North Korea's nuclear boast raises the stakes
North Korea boasted for the first time today that it has a nuclear arsenal, claiming it needs the weapons to confront the threat from the US.
It also said it will stay away from disarmament talks, dramatically raising the stakes in the two-year-old nuclear dispute despite softened rhetoric from Washington aimed at luring the communist nation back to the negotiating table.
North Korea’s pronouncement posed a grave challenge to President George Bush, who started his second term with a vow to end North Korea’s nuclear programme through six-nation talks.
“We have manufactured nukes for self-defence to cope with the Bush administration’s ever-more undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the North,” the North Korean Foreign Ministry said.
The statement was the first claim directly from North Korea that it has a nuclear weapon, confirming the widely held beliefs of international experts that the country already has one or two atomic bombs.
North Korea is not known to have performed any nuclear tests and kicked out UN inspectors in 2002, so there is no way to verify its claims.
Analysts suggested the move may be one of the impoverished state’s negotiating tactics aimed at getting more compensation in exchange for giving up its nuclear aspirations.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged North Korea to return to negotiations.
“The world has given them a way out and we hope they will take that way out,” she said. “The North Koreans have been told by the president of the United States that the United States has no intention of attacking or invading North Korea.”
In a clear overture to North Korea to help foster the nuclear talks, Bush refrained from direct criticism of the country in last week’s State of the Union address.
He mentioned North Korea only in a single sentence, saying Washington was “working closely with governments in Asia to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions”.
Bush has previously branded the North part of an “axis of evil” that included Iran and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Still, North Korea on Thursday seized on comments by Rice last month in which she labelled the country as one of the ”outposts of tyranny” in the world.
“The US disclosed its attempt to topple the political system in North Korea at any cost, threatening it with a nuclear stick,” North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said.
”This compels us to take a measure to bolster its nuclear weapons arsenal in order to protect the ideology, system, freedom and democracy chosen by the people.”
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