North Korea Says US 'Hell-Bent on Regime Change'
April 4, 2014
North Korea on Friday accused the United States of being "hell-bent on
regime change" and warned that any maneuvers with that intention will be
viewed as a "red line" that will result in countermeasures.
Pyongyang's deputy U.N. ambassador Ri Tong Il also repeated that his
government "made it very clear we will carry out a new form of nuclear
test" but refused to elaborate, saying only that "I recommend you to
wait and see what it is."
His comments came at North Korea's second press conference at the United
Nations in two weeks, a surprising rate for the reclusive Communist
regime.
Ri blamed the U.S. for aggravating tensions on the Korean Peninsula by
continuing "very dangerous" military drills with South Korea, by
pursuing action in the U.N. Security Council against his country's
recent ballistic missile launches and by going after Pyongyang's human
rights performance.
Ri also accused the U.S. of blocking a resumption of six-party talks on
its nuclear program by settling preconditions and said Washington's
primary goal is to maintain tensions and prevent denuclearization of the
Korean Peninsula.
North Korea walked away from the six-party nuclear disarmament talks in
2009 over disagreements on how to verify steps the North was meant to
take to end its nuclear programs. The U.S. and its allies are demanding
that the North demonstrate its sincerity in ending its drive to acquire
nuclear weapons.
Since pulling out of the six-party talks, the North has conducted a
long-range rocket test, its second-ever nuclear test, and most recently
short-range rockets launches.
Using the initials of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the
country's official name, Ri said, "The DPRK has been making strenuous,
hard efforts, very generous, toward easing the tensions on the Korean
Peninsula, but ignoring all this generous position of the DPRK and its
proposals, the U.S. went ahead with opening the joint military drills,
very aggressive nature, and they're now expanding in a crazy manner the
scale of this exercise."
He also rejected as "illegal" a Security Council statement last week
that condemned North Korea's test-firing of two medium-range ballistic
missiles as violations of council resolutions.
The deputy ambassador did not answer questions on detained American
Kenneth Bae or on his country's drone program, which it has been
promoting recently. South Korean experts this week claimed that two
small, camera-equipped drones had been flown across the border by the
North, calling them crude and decidedly low-tech. Both drones crashed in
South Korea.
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Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer contributed.
COPY http://abcnews.go.com/
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