- SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea
said on Thursday the United States had nullified a landmark nuclear pact
with the decision last week to cut oil supplies to Pyongyang over its atomic
weapons program.
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- On November 14, Washington and its allies decided to
stop vital fuel oil aid to penalize North Korea for breaking a series of
nuclear non-proliferation pledges, including the 1994 Agreed Framework,
with a covert uranium enrichment program which Pyongyang confessed last
month to operating.
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- The isolated communist state's first response to the
decision said the oil cutoff meant "it is high time to decide upon
who is to blame for the collapse of the Framework."
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- "It is well known to the world that the U.S. has
violated the Framework and boycotted the implementation of its commitments,"
a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement carried on
the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
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- Under the 1994 Agreed Framework, the North promised to
freeze its nuclear weapons program in return for fuel oil, paid for by
Washington, and two light water reactors that cannot easily be converted
to produce atomic weapons material.
-
- The statement called the oil cutoff -- which takes effect
as North Korea's sub-zero winter sets in next month -- a "wanton violation"
of the pledges of allied energy aid for North Korea.
-
- It asserted that the United States had broken the pact
because the light-water reactor construction is behind schedule and because
Washington had threatened Pyongyang by branding North Korea part of an
"axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq.
-
- A White House official, with President Bush at a NATO
summit in Prague, said of the North Korean statement, "I would just
point out that it was they, themselves, who first said it (the nuclear
pact) was nullified in early October in meetings with Jim Kelly."
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- Kelly is the top U.S. envoy for North Korea who presented
evidence to the North's officials in Pyongyang on October 4, upon which
they confessed they were enriching uranium for arms. Pyongyang's statement
-- which came a week after the United States, Japan, South Korea and the
European Union decided to cut oil shipments to North Korea from December
-- did not carry any of the communist states' customary war threats.
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- "(North Korea) has exercised its forbearance to
the full," it said.
-
- North Korea took the United States perilously close to
war a decade ago over its previous attempt to build nuclear arms with the
plutonium-based program frozen by the Agreed Framework.
-
- North Korean representatives in Asia have issued warnings
that if oil shipments were halted, Pyongyang would reactivate an its plutonium
program or end a self-imposed moratorium on test flights of ballistic missiles.
-
- But Pyongyang is far more isolated than it was then,
with backers Russia and China voicing concern at its arms scheme.
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- "They don't have any friends and their back is against
the wall, so I don't think North Korea will be stupid enough to take on
the whole world," predicted Lee Jung-hoon, a professor of international
relations at Seoul's Yonsei University.
-
- The spokesman reiterated a demand Pyongyang first made
on October 25 that the United States sign a non-aggression treaty.
-
- Bush issued a statement last week demanding that the
North dismantle its nuclear program while restating that the United States
had no intention of invading the impoverished country.
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- But the North demanded "legal assurances of non-aggression."
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- "The (North Korean) proposal for concluding a non-aggression
treaty is, in essence, the only realistic solution to the nuclear issue
on the Korean peninsula," the statement said.
-
- An oil tanker arrived in North Korea on Tuesday carrying
the last shipment of U.S.-funded fuel oil unless it halts the banned nuclear
weapons program.
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- The cuts will hit North Korea just ahead of winter, adding
to the woes of a population of 22 million suffering from severe economic
hardship and food shortages that relief groups said have killed as many
as several million people.
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