‘Nukes no bargaining chip for aid’
18 March 2013 7:41 AM IST
North Korea on Sunday said it would never trade its nuclear weapons programme for aid and stressed its ‘unshakeable’ stance to retain the deterrent, following a third atomic test last month.
The North’s foreign ministry, in a statement carried by state TV, rejected suggestions that the impoverished state was using its weapons programme as a way of bullying neighbours into offering much-needed aid.‘The US is seriously mistaken if it thinks that the (North) had access to nukes as a bargaining chip to barter them for what it called economic reward,’ it said.
The comments came days after the US National Security Advisor Tom Donilon said Washington was willing to hold ‘authentic negotiations’ with the North if it changed its behaviour.
‘To get the assistance it desperately needs and the respect it claims it wants, North Korea will have to change course,’ he said last week. But the North today called its atomic weaponry a ‘treasured sword’ to protect itself from what it called a hostile US policy. The US ‘temptation’ may work on other countries ‘but it sounds nonsensical’ to the North, the foreign ministry statement said.
‘The (North) would like to re-clarify its unshakeable principled stand on its nuclear deterrence for self-defence.’
Last month's test, its most powerful to date, prompted the UN to further tighten sanctions imposed following nuclear and rocket tests in 2006 and 2009.
The North’s foreign ministry, in a statement carried by state TV, rejected suggestions that the impoverished state was using its weapons programme as a way of bullying neighbours into offering much-needed aid.‘The US is seriously mistaken if it thinks that the (North) had access to nukes as a bargaining chip to barter them for what it called economic reward,’ it said.
The comments came days after the US National Security Advisor Tom Donilon said Washington was willing to hold ‘authentic negotiations’ with the North if it changed its behaviour.
‘To get the assistance it desperately needs and the respect it claims it wants, North Korea will have to change course,’ he said last week. But the North today called its atomic weaponry a ‘treasured sword’ to protect itself from what it called a hostile US policy. The US ‘temptation’ may work on other countries ‘but it sounds nonsensical’ to the North, the foreign ministry statement said.
‘The (North) would like to re-clarify its unshakeable principled stand on its nuclear deterrence for self-defence.’
Last month's test, its most powerful to date, prompted the UN to further tighten sanctions imposed following nuclear and rocket tests in 2006 and 2009.
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