- SEOUL (AFP) - North Korea
will continue to build nuclear weapons until Washington drops its hostile
policy and accepts the Stalinist state's terms for an end to the nuclear
crisis, Pyongyang's official media said Thursday.
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- North Korea has offered a package of "simultaneous
actions" to resolve the impasse while Washington wants North Korea
to move first on scrapping its nuclear weapons drive.
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- "The DPRK's (North Korea's) stand to beef up its
nuclear deterrent force will remain unchanged no matter what others may
say as long as the United States keeps pursuing a policy to threaten and
stifle the DPRK with nukes while turning down its proposal for (a) simultaneous
package solution to the nuclear issue," said Rodong Sinmun, the ruling
Workers' Party newspaper in a commentary.
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- North Korea has been seeking a non-aggression pact with
the United States and said it needed nuclear weapons because Washington
was "watching for a chance to mount a preemptive nuclear attack ..."
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- "The nuclear deterrent force is a decisive means
for coping with the US threat of war," the newspaper said in the dispatch
carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. "This situation
compels the DPRK to keep and steadily increase its nuclear deterrent force."
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- The United States believes North Korea already has one
or two crude nuclear bombs and could speedily build more using a stockpile
of spent nuclear fuel at its Yongbyon nuclear complex north of Pyongyang.
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- North Korea says it has already reprocessed the rods,
yielding enough plutonium for five or six bombs.
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- The commentary came amid renewed diplomatic efforts to
bring North Korea to the negotiating table next month for a new round of
talks among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the United States
following an inconclusive first round in Beijing in August.
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- Months of diplomacy attempting to set up talks in December
collapsed after Washington and Pyongyang failed to narrow differences concerning
the scope of the negotiations.
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- Washington, which insists that Pyongyang must verifiably
scrap its nuclear weapons, said North Korea had set preconditions, while
North Korea accused the United States of ignoring its proposals.
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