- SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea
lashed out at the United States on Sunday over what it called Washington's
hypocritical stance on weapons and said talks could only take place if
the Bush administration dropped its hostility.
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- U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton, in a trip to
Seoul last week, branded the North as the world's foremost missile peddler,
accusing Pyongyang of selling ballistic missile-related equipment, components,
materials and technical expertise.
-
- His comments came as North and South Korea were holding
high-level talks on resuming road and rail links severed for half a century
and raised fears the North would walk out in protest.
-
- "Known as a standard-bearer among the notorious
hard-line hawks of the Bush Administration, Bolton never opens his mouth
without making anti-DPRK remarks, bereft of reason," a spokesman for
the North Korean Foreign Ministry told the official Korean Central News
Agency (KCNA).
-
- DPRK is an acronym of Democratic People's Republic of
Korea, the state's official name.
-
- The North also accused the United States of double standards
over weapons development.
-
- "U.S. hawks are charging the DPRK with deployment
and proliferation of missiles," the official agency said.
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- "The brigandish charge means that they are free
to develop, produce, deploy and proliferate any type of mass destruction
weapons but other sovereign states' legitimate policy of increasing their
self-defense capacity poses a threat to them."
-
- "If there is any security issues over which the
U.S. should worry, it is entirely attributable to the Bush Administration's
hostile policy toward the DPRK," the agency said.
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- MISSILE PROGRAM "MISUNDERSTOOD"
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- KCNA said the United States had misunderstood the North's
missile program, saying it was for a peaceful purpose.
-
- Bolton, who advises Secretary of State Colin Powell on
arms control and international security, has said President Bush's description
of North Korea as part of an "axis of evil" with Iraq and Iran
was factually correct.
-
- He said the communist state needed drastic reforms to
survive, but underscored Washington's readiness to start its own dialogue
with North Korea.
-
- But North Korea said it wanted the United States to make
concessions on its hard-line policy before talks could begin.
-
- "The DPRK clarified more than once that if the U.S.
has a will to drop its hostile policy toward the DPRK it will have dialogue
with the U.S. to clear the U.S. of its worries over its security."
-
- Pyongyang also criticized the recent U.S. imposition
of sanctions against some North Korean companies accused of transferring
and selling missile technology, saying it was another declaration of confrontation
with North Korea.
-
- Separately, North Korea said U.S. forces has committed
more than 200 cases of what it called aerial espionage against it in August,
quoting a military source.
-
- Among them nearly 50 espionage flights were made by strategic
reconnaissance, command and patrol planes, KCNA reported.
-
- North and South Korea reached an agreement on Friday
to reconnect a railway and road through the world's last Cold War frontier
this year and to aim for military talks next month on doing the job safely.
-
- In the past week, Pyongyang held high-level meetings
with Russia and Japan in a flurry of diplomatic moves after it adopted
tentative economic reforms.
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