North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Park Gil Yon told the UN General Assembly Monday that the key to a nuclear-free Korean peninsula was whether Washington was prepared to change its nuclear policy toward Pyongyang.
"The denuclearization of the Korean peninsula depends on whether or not the US changes its nuclear policy toward Korea," he noted. "The US administration must discard old concept of confrontation and show the 'change' in practice, as it recently stated on several occasions."
Park added that Pyongyang "has done everything it could to realize the peaceful reunification of the country, remove nuclear threats and source of war and secure peace and stability on the Korean peninsula."
"We initiated the denuclearization of Northeast Asia and the Korean peninsula and advanced the proposal on replacing the Armistice Agreement with a peace agreement and the proposal of adopting the DPRK (North Korea)-US non-aggression treaty," he noted.
But Park complained that Pyongyang's gesture "has not received due response" from the United States, "which considers the Korean issue only in the light of its Asian strategy and does not want to see the entire Korean peninsula denuclearized."
He also slammed Western countries which are "selectively taking issue with the peaceful satellite launch" by North Korea.
Park also rejected UN Security Council slapped on his country, accusing the 15-member council of becoming "more arrogant, resulting in further inequality and prevalent double standards in international relations."
In April, North Korea quit six-party talks on dismantling its nuclear weapons program after the Security Council censured its long-range rocket test.
After North Korea conducted its second nuclear test in May, the Council adopted a resolution slapping financial and commercial sanctions and extending an arms embargo on North Korea by requiring member states to inspect suspicious cargoes.
But North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il was recently quoted as telling a Chinese envoy he was willing to rejoin the six-nation talks which group China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States.
Copyright 2009  AFP Global Edition
