N Korea says it won’t give up nukes
PHILIPPINES: North Korea has spurned harsh new United Nations sanctions and threatened to defend itself with nuclear weapons if necessary, as United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson repeated an offer to bargain with the outcast nation under the right circumstances.
There was no sign at a major Asian security conference in Manila yesterday that the sanctions, hailed by US President Donald Trump as a foreign policy achievement, would succeed where past efforts have failed in persuading the isolated country to give up its nuclear weapons.
North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho told diplomats that his country would never negotiate away what he called a rational ‘‘strategic option’’ against the threat of attack from the US.
‘‘We will, under no circumstances, put the nukes and ballistic rockets’’ up for negotiation, Ri said in prepared remarks, adding that the entire US was within range of North Korea’s missiles.
He dismissed the UN Security Council sanctions as illegal, and appeared to rule out talks that the Trump administration, in a diplomatic partnership with China and Russia, is offering North Korea as a way out of its economic and diplomatic pariah status.
‘‘The best signal that North Korea could send that they’re prepared to talk would be to stop these missile launches,’’ Tillerson said at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) gathering.
The security conference in the Philippine capital was dominated by the rising threat posed by North Korea’s rapid advances in nuclear and ballistic missile technology. In two missile tests last month, it demonstrated that it could hit major population centres in the US, and it is now working to perfect the technology to allow missiles to carry nuclear warheads.
The new economic sanctions are the toughest to date against a country that has been under international sanctions for more than a decade, and they carry the symbolic weight of approval by Pyongyang’s closest ally, China. They also approximate a trade embargo by targeting some of North Korea’s biggest exports, including coal.
China is urging North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to consider negotiations, and also worked alongside the US to develop the new UN sanctions.
Days before the unanimous security council vote, Tillerson made a point of saying that the US did not consider North Korea its enemy and was not seeking to invade or unseat Kim. Those reassurances were meant to encourage North Korea to meet at the bargaining table.
At the same time, Washington has issued blunt warnings that the US will use military force if necessary, and North Korea has answered in kind.
Ri said Pyongyang would use nuclear weapons only against the US or any other country that might join it in military action against North Korea.
Another direct warning was aimed at the US in a government statement published by the staterun Korean Central News Agency. ‘‘There is no bigger mistake than the United States believing that its land is safe across the ocean,’’ and North Korea ‘‘will make the US pay dearly for all the heinous crimes it commits against the state and people of this country’’, the statement said.
North Korea rarely attends, or is even invited to, international forums such as the ASEAN meeting. Ri tried to make the most of it, holding meetings with the top diplomats from China and Russia, two countries that trade with North Korea and employ North Koreans as contract workers. China alone is responsible for 90 per cent of North Korea’s trade.
- Washington Post