Full text of N Korean statement

The following is the full text, carried by North Korea's official KCNA news agency, of North Korea's statement that it had finished reprocessing 8,000 spent fuel rods.

A spokesman for the [North Korean] Foreign Ministry issued a statement Thursday 2 October as regards a rumour afloat in the international arena that the nuclear facility in Yongbyon stopped its operation and the six-way talks on the nuclear issue between North Korea and the US will resume in October or November.

Dismissing this as totally groundless, he continued:

As we have already declared, North Korea resumed nuclear activities for a peaceful purpose, i.e. it fired up the 5-MW nuclear reactor in Yongbyon and is now stepping up the preparations for the construction of a graphite-moderated reactor.

As part of it, North Korea successfully finished the reprocessing of some 8,000 spent fuel rods.

As the United States has no intention to drop its hostile policy, North Korea will consistently maintain and increase its nuclear deterrent Foreign Ministry spokesman

In the subsequent period, in order to cope with the situation created by the US hostile policy towards North Korea, it made a switchover in the use of plutonium churned out by reprocessing spent fuel rods in the direction [of] increasing its nuclear deterrent force, while putting the operation of the nuclear facility on a normal track.

We will reprocess more spent fuel rods to be churned out in an unbroken chain from the 5-MW nuclear reactor in Yongbyon without delay when we deem it necessary.

As far as the resumption of the six-way talks is concerned, North Korea did not make any promise with anyone at the Beijing talks and the same holds true even after the talks.

We have already expressed our official views on the results of the six-way talks held in Beijing and our comment on them on a number of occasions.

Side-step

At the talks, North Korea explicitly clarified that its general goal is the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. It also advanced a reasonable proposal there, i.e. the US should at least express its will to renounce its hostile policy towards North Korea and North Korea clarify its will to scrap its nuclear programme and, at the same time, the participants in the six-way talks should agree on the principle of simultaneous actions for the solution to the nuclear issue between North Korea and the US if it is difficult for the US to accept North Korea's comprehensive and reasonable proposal for the solution of the issue on the spot.

Other participants in the talks also urged the US to agree on the principle of the simultaneous actions for the settlement of the nuclear issue between North Korea and the US, taking the just stand of North Korea into consideration.

But the United States sidestepped all the realistic proposals and persistently pressed North Korea to meet its demand that North Korea "scrap its nuclear programme first," before it may take up North Korea's concerns.

Due to the US unilateral and self-righteous stand and attitude the Beijing six-way talks proved fruitless, only stoking the disappointment of the international community desirous of peace and stability.

As North Korea clarified more than once, the Beijing talks helped it clearly confirm once again that the United States did not want to co-exist peacefully with North Korea but is keen to completely disarm and stifle it at any cost.

North Korea's correct judgment was more clearly proved by the facts that in the wake of the six-way talks the United States spread a variety of wild rumours about the talks and, at the same time, set the international atomic energy agency in motion to escalate the anti-North Korea smear campaign and steadily intensified blockade and pressure upon North Korea under the pretexts of "maritime inspection exercises" and "flesh traffic".

The United States seems to calculate that North Korea would freeze its nuclear facilities and dismantle its nuclear deterrent force, seized with the illusion about the six-way talks, though it is well aware that the US is hell-bent on gaining time as much as possible to stifle North Korea without any political will to drop its hostile policy towards North Korea.

Nothing is more naive than to think so.

As the United States has no intention to drop its hostile policy, North Korea will consistently maintain and increase its nuclear deterrent force as a just self-defensive means to repel the US pre-emptive nuclear attack and ensure peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and in the region according to the decision of the first session of the 11th supreme people's assembly.