N Korea slams US sanctions

2006-01-09 10:48

Seoul - North Korea's foreign ministry said on Monday that evidence supplied by the United States to justify financial sanctions imposed on the Stalinist state had turned out to be "baseless" fiction.

The ministry said Pyongyang had scrutinised US evidence to justify the sanctions imposed in retaliation for North Korea's alleged illicit financial activities, including counterfeiting, money-laundering and drug-running.

"We examined the information the US provided to us, claiming that it was the motive of its application of sanctions," a foreign ministry spokesperson was quoted as saying by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

"Such things cited by it, however, have never happened in our country."

Washington has rejected a North Korean request for direct talks on the issue, saying the sanctions are not negotiable.

'Baseless fiction'

"The US has persistently refused to negotiate with the DPRK (North Korea) while floating baseless fictions which nobody believes," said the spokesperson.

He said sanctions should be lifted if six-party talks aimed at ending the standoff over the North's nuclear weapons programme were to resume.

The last round of talks - which group the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan - ended in stalemate in November.

The US Treasury Department in September told US financial institutions to stop dealing with a Macau bank, Banco Delta Asia, which it accused of being a front for North Korean counterfeiting.

A month later the US blacklisted eight North Korean companies allegedly involved in the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Washington says that the sanctions are unrelated to the nuclear standoff which erupted in October 2002 over US charges that North Korea was seeking to build nuclear weapons.

"The financial sanctions against the DPRK are an issue directly related to the six-party talks," said the unnamed foreign ministry spokesperson.

"This is quite understandable to anyone, if he has elementary thinking ability. It is only the United States that pretends not to know about this."

The spokesperson said that the nuclear standoff was a product of US hostility towards Pyongyang.

- SAPA