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North ditches nuke-free Korea pact
SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- North Korea says it has abandoned a 1992 agreement with South Korea not to deploy nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang's announcement, first made Monday and repeated on Tuesday, that the deal with Seoul was now a "dead document" means North Korea has ditched its last legal barrier to possessing and deploying nuclear arms. The move came ahead of a meeting this week between South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and U.S. counterpart George W. Bush expected to focus on the issue of North Korea's nuclear program. U.S. officials said last month that North Korea told them it already possessed at least one nuclear weapon. Pyongyang has also said in recent weeks it has deployed a "deterrent" force against a pre-emptive U.S. attack. In Tuesday's announcement, carried on the state-run Korean Central News Agency, North Korea put the blame on the nuclear standoff squarely at the feet of Washington and said it would boost its defenses to ward off any U.S. military threat. "The U.S. is chiefly to blame for ditching the North-South joint declaration on denuclearization and derailing the process of denuclearization on the Korean peninsula and a cancer-like existence putting the peace and security in Korea and the rest of the world in a peril," according to the report, monitored in Seoul. North Korea said the lesson the world has learned from the Iraq war is that a country can only be safe if it has a national defense. "The DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea or North Korea] will increase its self-defensive capacity strong enough to destroy aggressors at a single stroke," the KCNA report said. "Any U.S. aerial attack will be decisively countered with an aerial attack and its land strategy will be coped with land strategy." 'Blind alley'North Korea has been pushing for a non-aggression treaty with Washington since the standoff flared up last October.
The Stalinist state booted out U.N. weapons monitors from its Yongbyon nuclear reactor in December and reactivated the facility earlier this year. That followed October's statement from Washington that North Korean officials had admitted to pursuing an active nuclear weapons program in violation of international agreements. North Korea denies any such admission took place. Last month, North Korean diplomats met with U.S. and Chinese officials in Beijing, the first meeting between the United States and North Korea since October, but little seems to have been gained from the talks. South Korea has been pushing for a peaceful, diplomatic resolution to the issue. Speaking in New York City Monday the South's recently inaugurated president said he could never condone North Korea's nuclear development. "North Korea has two alternatives: it can go down a blind alley, or it can open up," Roh said Monday. "It is incumbent upon Pyongyang to give up its nuclear project and come forward as a responsible member of the international community." "When the North takes this route, the Republic of Korea [South Korea] and the international community will extend the necessary support and cooperation," he said. Roh is set to meet with Bush on Wednesday in Washington.
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