NK says UN chief ‘picking a quarrel’

UNITED NATIONS: North Korea accused United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres of “picking a quarrel” with Pyongyang by praising international sanctions for putting pressure on the country over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

North Korea’s UN mission said in a statement that Mr Guterres had made “reckless remarks” during a speech last week to the Munich Security Conference.

“This is nothing but an absurd sophistry inappropriate to his duty as Secretary-General of the United Nations and only makes us think whether he is a kind of henchman who is representing the United States,” the North Korean UN mission said.

The governments of US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un are in a standoff over the North’s development of nuclear weapons capable of hitting the United States. Months of tension were marked by Mr Trump and Mr Kim exchanging insults, fuelling fears of war.

The US was to blame for the situation on the Korean Peninsula, said the North Korean UN mission, criticising Mr Guterres for not mentioning Washington in his Munich speech.

Mr Guterres told the conference: “It is important to note that the unity that the Security Council has been able to ... put, through sanctions, a very meaningful pressure over North Korea, and that pressure in my opinion is absolutely essential to be maintained.”

The Council has unanimously boosted sanctions on North Korea since 2006 in a bid to choke funding for Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

Mr Guterres said “even if relations between the two Koreas improved, let’s be clear that ... the central question remains denuclearisation”.