NORTH KOREA VOWS TO RETALIATE
Threatens to gain revenge for ‘ heinous U.S. plot’
• North Korea vowed Monday to bolster its nuclear arsenal and gain revenge of a “thousand- fold” against the United States in response to tough UN sanctions.
The warning came two days after the UN Security Council unanimously approved new sanctions to punish North Korea, including a ban on coal and other exports worth more than $1 billion. The U. S. ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, called the U. S.- drafted resolution “the single largest economic sanctions package ever levelled against” North Korea.
In a statement carried by the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency, North Korea’s government said the sanctions were a “violent infringement of its sovereignty” that was caused by a “heinous U. S. plot to isolate and stifle” the country.
“We will make the U. S. pay by a thousand- fold for all the heinous crimes it commits against the state and people of this country,” the statement said.
The North said it would take an unspecified “resolute action of justice” and would never place its nuclear program on the negotiating table or “flinch an inch” from its push to strengthen its nuclear deterrence as long as U. S. hostility against North Korea persists.
North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong- ho made similar comments during an annual regional security conference in Manila on Monday.
The forum was closed to the press, so it could not be determined whether the speech was actually delivered as prepared and labelled on a sixpage copy given to reporters.
In the printed version of the speech, Ri said that the entire U. S. mainland is within firing range of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, which is North Korea’s official name.
He said Pyongyang would use nuclear weapons only against the United States or any other country that might join it in military action against North Korea.
And he dismissed stiff UN Security Council sanctions passed Saturday as illegal.
“We will, under no circumstances, put the nukes and ballistic rockets on ( t he) negotiating t able,” he said. “Neither shall we flinch even an inch from the road to bolstering up the nuclear forces chosen by ourselves, unless the hostile policy and nuclear threat of the U. S. against the D. P. R. K. are fundamentally eliminated.”
To pai nt t he United States as the global threat much of the world considers his own country to be, Ri pointedly mentioned the atomic bombs that the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Second World War and cast North Korea’s nuclear program as self-defensive in nature.
“Since t he emergence of nuclear weapons in the world, it has been proved t hroughout history t hat nukes can deter war,” he declared.
Ri’s remarks went unheard by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who left the conference of t he Association of Southeast Asian Nations early to attend a scheduled meeting with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte.
Tillerson and other diplomats attending the security conference in Manila have spent the last two days racing to find a way to tamp down a standoff t hat is growing more entrenched and dangerous by the day. In a news conference earlier in the day, Tillerson said the United States is ready to talk with North Korea if it stops conducting tests of ballistic missiles, the latest ones considered capable of reaching the U. S. mainland.
“The best si gnal t hat North Korea could give us that they are prepared to talk would be to stop these missile launches,” Tillerson said at a news conference in Manila. But, he added, “this is not a ‘ Give me 30 days and we are ready to talk.’ It’s not quite that simple. So it is all about how we see their attitude toward approaching a dialogue with us.”
Till erson, who previously has said the United States does not seek regime change in Pyongyang, reiterated his hope that eventually the Korean Peninsula will rid i tself of nuclear weapons.
South Korea’s government said the North would face stronger sanctions if it doesn’t stop its nuclear and missile provocation.
Lim Eul Chul, a North Korea e x per t at South Korea’s Kyungnam University, said the comments by the North demonstrate how angry it is over the sanctions, but that the country is not likely to launch a pre- emptive strike against the United States. He said the North could still carry out further missile tests or a sixth atomic bomb test in the coming months under i ts broader weapons development timetable.