Arab News Japan

TOKYO: North Korea has accused the United States of a “provocation” by using a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to try and get Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal declared as “illegal.”

In a statement, the Permanent Representative Office of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea said it “strongly condemns the provocative acts of the United States that once again exposed the unchanging hostile intentions towards Korea while blatantly interfering in internal affairs and violations of sovereignty against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

The statement said America’s demand for the denuclearization of North Korea at the international conference was “anachronistic” and showed that “they have no intention of coexisting with us.”

The North said its nuclear arsenal was “an inevitable choice to firmly protect national sovereignty and security from the nuclear threat of the United States and to maintain a balance of power. “It accused the US of endangering world peace with “reckless nuclear proliferation.”

It added that the IAEA had no legal standing in the North and “no moral authority to interfere in politics.” It suggested that if the IAEA is sincerely concerned about the international nuclear threat and the increasingly unstable international security environment, it should pay more attention to “the evil of the United States, which is more obsessed with strengthening nuclear forces than anyone else and violently violating its duty to prevent nuclear proliferation.”