- SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea
blamed the United States on Tuesday for the nuclear crisis on the divided
Korean peninsula and said it would boost its defenses "to destroy
aggressors at a single stroke."
-
- The communist North's official KCNA news agency said
in a long and detailed report over many pages the United States was chiefly
to blame for derailing a decade-old North-South Korea declaration to keep
their countries free of nuclear weapons.
-
- "The DPRK will increase its self-defensive capacity
strong enough to destroy aggressors at a single stroke," the agency
said, referring to the official title for North Korea.
-
- The report coincided with a visit to the United States
by South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun for talks on the crisis.
-
- The State Department said earlier this month North Korea
had confirmed it possessed nuclear weapons and was reprocessing fuel rods,
which the United States has not independently confirmed.
-
- KCNA said Washington had reduced the 1992 declaration
to a "dead document."
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- "The U.S. is wholly accountable for the DPRK-U.S.
serious nuclear standoff and a nuclear war crisis on the Korean peninsula,"
it said.
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