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North Korea warns on US sanctions
SEOUL, Dec 17, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Nuclear-armed North Korea condemned the
United States over its latest sanctions measures, warning Washington’s
approach could “block the path to denuclearisation on the Korean peninsula
forever”.
After a rapid diplomatic rapprochement this year that culminated in the
Singapore summit in June between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US
President Donald Trump, progress has stalled in talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear
arsenal.
In Singapore the two men signed a vaguely-worded statement on
denuclearisation, but have since disagreed on what it means.
Now Pyongyang is demanding sanctions relief and condemning US insistence
on its nuclear disarmament as “gangster-like”, while Washington is pushing to
maintain the measures against the North until its “final, fully verified
denuclearisation”.
Washington last week added three senior North Korean officials to those
subject to sanctions over human rights abuses, including Choe Ryong Hae, who
has been considered a right-hand man to Kim.
In a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency, the North said
Trump had repeatedly expressed his desire to improve relations with
Pyongyang, but the US State Department was “bent on bringing the DPRK-US
relations back to the status of last year which was marked by exchanges of
fire”.
DPRK is the acronym for the North’s official name.
In recent months high-ranking US politicians including Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo had “almost every day slandered the DPRK out of sheer malice”,
added the Sunday statement by the policy research director of the foreign
ministry’s Institute for American Studies.
Using sanctions and pressure “to drive us into giving up nuclear weapons”
would be the “greatest miscalculation”, it added, and would “block the path
to denuclearisation on the Korean peninsula forever”.
A second summit between Trump and Kim — who exchanged personal insults
and threats of war throughout 2017 — is expected to be held next year, with
the US leader facing criticism over the planned talks since North Korea has
taken few concrete steps to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile
programmes.
– Death anniversary –
Pyongyang has long said it needs the weapons to deter a possible US
invasion, and has spent decades developing them, at a heavy cost in both
resources and the imposition of multiple sets of UN, US, EU and other
sanctions.
But on Monday its nuclear assets were conspicuous by their explicit
absence from coverage of the seventh anniversary of the death of Kim’s father
and predecessor Kim Jong Il, on whose watch Pyongyang carried out its first
two nuclear tests.
Alongside extensive coverage of commemorative events across the country,
the Rodong Sinmun newspaper, the mouthpiece of the ruling Workers’ Party,
published a lengthy editorial lauding Kim Jong Il’s efforts to secure a “firm
military assurance for peace and prosperity”.
A year earlier, the same newspaper praised his “immortal feat” in building
a “Juche nuclear power state”.
Its front page was dominated by a large picture of soldiers and officials
including Kim paying their respects at his father’s mausoleum, a sprawling
palace on the outskirts of the capital.
It was the leader’s first public activity in two weeks after visiting a
shoe factory in Wonsan earlier this month.
Trump played down hopes Friday for any imminent deal to persuade Pyongyang
to give up its nuclear arsenal but he also expressed optimism, saying North
Korea’s economy has “wonderful potential” and that Kim “sees it better than
anyone and will fully take advantage of it for his people”.
In actions required by Congress, his administration said last week it
would seize any US assets of the three officials for suppressing freedom of
speech.
Such restrictions may have little effect on individuals in one of the
world’s most closed countries but have symbolic impact as North Korea seeks
greater acceptance by the United States.
BSS/AFP/MSY/1019 hrs