N. Korea says nuke talks can be revived if U.S. ‘ends hostility’

PanARMENIAN.Net - North Korea said on Wednesday, July 10 that it would not give up its nuclear deterrent until the United States ends its "hostile policy" towards Pyongyang, but that it was ready to revive international talks on its nuclear program frozen since 2008, Reuters reported.

The United States and its allies believe North Korea violated a 2005 aid-for-denuclearization deal by conducting a nuclear test the following year and pursuing uranium enrichment that would give it a second path to a nuclear weapon in addition to its plutonium-based atomic program.

So Se Pyong, the North Korean Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, warned that a joint U.S.-South Korean military exercise planned for August would raise tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula.

He also reiterated his country's call for dismantling the U.S.-led UN Command in South Korea, which dates from the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean war without a peace treaty. The 60th anniversary of the armistice falls on July 27.

"The DPRK (North Korea) will never give up its nuclear deterrent unless the U.S. fundamentally and irreversibly abandons its hostile policy and nuclear threat towards my country...and dissolves the UN Command, a mechanism which is an aggressive military tool against the DPRK," So said.

He was speaking at a rare news conference held in North Korea's mission in Geneva. His counterpart at the United Nations in New York, Ambassador Sin Son-ho, made a similar appeal for dissolution of the UN Command on June 21.