NKorea parliament backs nukes

2003-09-03 12:46

Seoul - North Korea's parliament on Wednesday endorsed a government decision to boost the Stalinist state's nuclear weapons drive, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.

The Supreme People's Assembly backed a foreign ministry statement released on Saturday saying further talks were "useless" and North Korea had no option but to build up its nuclear arsenal, KCNA said.

"The first session of the 11th Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK (North Korea) considered as just all the measures taken by the foreign ministry upon the authorisation of the DPRK government, supported and approved them and decided to take relevant measures," the agency said, quoting a parlimentary resolution.

The nature of those measures was left unspecified in the resolution adopted following three-day multilateral talks on the nuclear crisis in Beijing last week.

The talks betrayed North Korean expectations, the foreign ministry said in its Saturday statement, and were deemed "not only useless but harmful in every aspect".

North Korea's parliament convened Wednesday. The 687-member legislative body said the nuclear issue had reached a "grave phase" because of US hostility towards North Korea.

North Korea used six-way talks in Beijing last week that brought together the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the United States, to demand a non-aggression pact from Washington as well as economic and other benefits, saying it would answer to US security concerns later.

The Stalinist state complained bitterly that Washington refused to respond to its "reasonable and comprehensive proposal to denuclearise the Korean peninsula".

Instead, Washington stuck to its "brigandish" demand that North Korea scrap its nuclear weapons ambitions first, the parliament's resolution said.

This was further evidence that Washington was only interested in overthrowing the North Korean government, it added.

It said the foreign minitry call for a nuclear build-up was thus necessary as "a just self-defensive means to repel the US preemptive nuclear attacks and ensure peace and stability in the Korean peninsula and the region".

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- AFP