N Korea hunts ‘terror maniacs’

SEOUL: North Korea yesterday demanded the handover of “terror suspects” who plotted to kill leader Kim Jong Un with a biochemical substance, repeating accusations it made last week that US and South Korean spies were behind the plan.

The North’s KCNA news agency last week accused the US Central Intelligence Agency and South Korea’s National Intelligence Service of a plot to assassinate its “supreme leadership” with a biochemical weapon.

Tension on the Korean peninsula has been high for weeks, driven by concern that North Korea might conduct its sixth nuclear test or test-launch another ballistic missile in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions.

“The Central Prosecutor’s Office will ask for the handover of those criminals and prosecute them under the relevant laws,” North Korean Vice-Foreign Minister Han Song Ryol told foreign diplomats and reporters in Pyongyang.

The South Korean intelligence service said the charge was “groundless”. Han “declared the principled stand of the… government to find out all of the terrorist maniacs and mercilessly wipe them out”, the North’s KCNA news agency said in a report on the briefing.

North Korea vowed to “hunt down to the last one of the suspects in every corner of the Earth”.

Separately, the CIA said on Wednesday it had established the Korea Mission Center to “harness the full resources, capabilities and authorities of the agency in addressing the nuclear and ballistic missile threat posed by North Korea”.

The centre will gather experienced officers from across the CIA in one entity “to bring their expertise and creativity to bear against the North Korea target”, it said.

South Korea’s new president said on Wednesday that he would be willing to hold talks in Washington and Pyongyang to ease the nuclear crisis.

Reuters –