This article is reproduced from the Korean Central News Agency with thanks.
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At the first session of the preparatory committee for the 11th Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference, the USA and its vassal forces unreasonably criticised the DPRK’s nuclear deterrent for self-defence as a “threat” to international peace and security and to the nuclear non-proliferation system. In this regard, the DPRK permanent mission to the United Nations office and international organisations in Vienna makes public the following press release:
As for any threat to international peace and security and the nuclear non-proliferation system, at present this evidently comes from the USA.
The USA has openly declared a policy of modernising its nuclear weapons industry and rapidly upgrading its three nuclear strategic assets, and has spent astronomical amounts on this military project every year. It has deliberately refused to implement the New Start (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), which may be regarded as the last fortress of the Nuclear Disarmament Treaty.
Unilaterally prioritising its own narrow security interests and those of its allies, the USA is also pushing ahead with nuclear proliferation to Australia under the signboard of the Aukus alliance. Some days ago, it started the operation of the US-south Korea “Nuclear Consultative Group”, simulating the use of nukes against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and deploying a nuclear submarine loaded with strategic nuclear weapons in the Korean peninsula for the first time in 42 years – thus escalating the military tension in the region to the eve of the outbreak of a nuclear war.
The DPRK’s bolstering of its nuclear deterrent for self-defence is a just exercise of its sovereignty to prevent the outbreak of a nuclear war, defend its national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and control and manage the situation on the Korean peninsula in a stable way, given the unstable security environment in the region that has been caused by regular nuclear threats from the USA and its allied forces.
Despite this hard reality, the USA lets even its satellite countries go so far as to seriously distort the truth, persistently pulling up the DPRK over its measures for bolstered self-defensive military capabilities. This political provocation is aimed at hiding its true colours as a criminal state which used nukes, and at evading the international community’s criticism over its non-compliance with nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation treaties.
The DPRK is a responsible nuclear weapons state which committed itself to the ban on nuclear use and threat to non-nuclear states and to nuclear non-proliferation. Its nuclear force will never be a threat to those countries respecting its sovereignty and security interests.
Its stand on the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty is clear.
Signatories to the NPT should not take issue with the DPRK over its legitimate exercise of sovereignty, since it legally withdrew from the NPT 20 years ago, as is the right of all signatories as specified in the treaty. Instead, they should concentrate their efforts on finding solutions to the major challenges facing the treaty.
The USA, the world’s biggest nuclear weapons state and the world’s first nuclear weapons user, should stop at once its criminal and systematic violations and wrecking activities against the international disarmament system – while threatening and blackmailing sovereign states by deploying its nuclear strategic assets all over the world.
It should immediately end its moves for “sharing nuclear” and “beefing up extended deterrence” with non-nuclear states, which are undermining the basis of the international nuclear non-proliferation system and triggering a nuclear arms race in the region and the world.
The international community must denounce the dangerous US threats of nuclear use and its illegal acts like the proliferation of nuclear weapons, which are the root cause of instability and confrontation, and immediately take practical measures for ensuring global peace and security.
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