It is defiant in face of fresh UN sanctions; threatens military action if US and allies isolate it
A replica of North Korea's Scud-B missile (centre) is displayed at the Korea War Memorial in Seoul. North Korea has vowed to build more nuclear bombs. -- PHOTO: AFP
SEOUL - A DEFIANT North Korea vowed on Saturday to build more nuclear bombs and to start enriching uranium for a new atomic weapons programme after the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on it over its nuclear test. The threat prompted Washington to demand that Pyongyang stop its 'provocative' actions.
North Korea also threatened military action if the United States and its allies were to try to isolate it. The United Nations Security Council approved a resolution last Friday which banned all weapons exports from North Korea and most arms imports into the state.
It authorised UN member states to inspect North Korean sea, air and land cargo, requiring them to seize and destroy goods shipped that violate the sanctions.
In Washington, a US State Department official said: '(North Korea) needs to cease provocative actions and rhetoric, and return unconditionally to the six-party process.'
The six-party nuclear disarmament talks involve the two Koreas, the US, Russia, Japan and China.
In Lecce, Italy, finance ministers of the Group of Eight wealthy countries said they were 'committed to the effective and timely implementation of financial measures against North Korea' as set out in the Security Council resolution.
The North, describing Friday's sanctions resolution as a 'vile product' of a US-inspired campaign, said it would never abandon nuclear weapons and would treat any attempt to blockade it as an act of war.
The hard-line communist state, in a Foreign Ministry statement reported by its official news agency, said all new plutonium it extracts would be weaponised.
One third of used fuel rods from the Yongbyon reactor have so far been reprocessed into weapons-grade plutonium, it said. 'Secondly, we will start uranium enrichment,' it said in its first admission that it has such a programme - a second route to a nuclear bomb.
'It has become an absolutely impossible option for the DPRK (North Korea) to even think about giving up its nuclear weapons,' the statement said, adding that any attempted blockade would be considered an act of war, 'and met with a decisive military response'. US intelligence officials believe Pyongyang will respond with a third atomic test, according to sources quoted by American TV networks.
Read the full report in Sunday's edition of the Straits Times
