- UNITED NATIONS (Reuters)
- North Korea on Friday warned the Security Council against punishing it
with sanctions for pulling out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,
saying it would view this as a declaration of war.
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- Pyongyang's U.N. envoy, Ambassador Pak Gil Yon, also
told reporters the United States had shown a lack of sincerity in offering
to hold talks on his country's nuclear program without being willing to
engage in full negotiations.
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- "The United States now says that we may talk to
you (about) how to comply with the international obligations but we will
not negotiate with you. I think this is not a sincere attitude of negotiators,"
he said.
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- Pak called a rare news conference at U.N. headquarters
after formally informing the Security Council that the Democratic Peoples
Republic of Korea was immediately pulling out of the nonproliferation pact,
aimed at checking the global spread of nuclear arms.
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- Pyongyang has also recently ejected inspectors from the
Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog
agency, and shut down U.N. surveillance cameras at its Yongbyon nuclear
facilities, which are capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium for
making nuclear bombs.
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- U.N Secretary-General Kofi Annan regretted the decision
to withdraw from the pact and strongly urged Pyongyang to reconsider, a
spokesman said.
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- Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin of France, which
chairs the Security Council this month, had said earlier on Friday in Shanghai:
"The U.N. Security Council will have to address this new development.
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- "Our goal is clear. We have to make sure that North
Korea will comply with its nonproliferation commitments," he said.
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- But in Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell and
Mohamed ElBaradei, the IAEA director-general, signaled they were in no
hurry for the council to take up the matter.
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- "It will ultimately have to go to the Security Council.
When and through what process and what one would ask the Security Council
to do at that time remains to be determined," Powell told reporters
after talks with ElBaradei.
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- Council members generally agreed, saying the 15-nation
group should take up the matter, but not for some weeks.
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- "I think the IAEA is dealing with it. and the IAEA
should continue," Russian Ambassador Sergei Lavrov told reporters.
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- Pak told reporters: "We consider even now any kind
of economic sanctions to be taken by the Security Council of the United
Nations against the DPRK as a declaration of war."
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- However, asked how North Korea would respond to such
an action, he said this "will depend on the circumstances."
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- "I cannot predict anything," he said.
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- Asked if North Korea was on heightened alert for possible
military action, he said the Korean peninsula was peaceful at this time
and his country had always maintained that the nuclear issue "should
be resolved through negotiations by peaceful means by the DPRK and the
United States."
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- Pak rejected negotiating with the IAEA, the global agency
in charge of monitoring the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which he dismissed
as "a tool" of the U.S. government.
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- He said Pyongyang would use its nuclear program only
to generate electricity.
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- But if there were to be a plan for verifying this, that
now would have to be worked out in bilateral talks with the United States
rather than through the IAEA, he said.
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- Pak dismissed a concern that treaty rules required 60
days' notice before a country could withdraw, saying Pyongyang had initially
signaled it was pulling out back in 1993.
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- "From tomorrow -- immediately -- our withdrawal
will be enforced," he said.
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