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N. Korea threatens to revive tests

By P. S. Suryanarayana

SINGAPORE Jan. 11 North Korea today continued its course of aggressive diplomacy by expressing readiness to consider resuming the missile flight tests that have remained suspended for nearly two years.

This was indicated by the North Korean Ambassador to China, Choe Jin-Su, in Beijing today, even as the U.S. maintained that it would pursue a "very steady and steely diplomacy'' to resolve the crisis over Pyongyang's decision to quit the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The North Korean envoy said at a news conference in Beijing that "we believe we cannot go along with the `self-imposed' missile moratorium any longer'' because "all agreements have been nullified by the United States side''. The Ambassador justified this new move by arguing that North Korea "must possess the means to deter a nuclear attack by the United States''. The translated comment can apply to both the flight testing of ballistic missiles and the production of nuclear weapons.

This diplomatic salvo acquired a new dimension in the context of an assertion by Pak Gil Yon, Ambassador of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) at the United Nations, that it would be a "declaration of war'' if any NPT-related sanctions were to be slapped on Pyongyang by the Security Council.

The DPRK's calibrated ways of keeping the nuclear stakes high were, however, thrown into some confusion. Thae Hyong-Chol, President of North Korea's Academy of Social Sciences, was quoted by the country's official media as saying that, "We do not have any nuclear weapons and nor do we have any will or need to make them.''

Without going into such niceties, the North Korean Government underlined that it was merely lifting the `moratorium' which was in place as regards the question of Pyongyang's withdrawal from the NPT.

The complicated phraseology of this kind was used to notify the U.N. that Pyongyang was at present withdrawing from the NPT for a second time after having done so in 1993 only to rejoin it in the following year by imposing a `moratorium' on the option of a pull-out.

The North Korean statement said, too, that "if the U.S. drops its hostile policy to stifle the DPRK and stops its (Washington's) nuclear threat to the DPRK, the DPRK may prove, through a separate verification between the DPRK and the U.S., that (Pyongyang) does not make any nuclear weapon''. While the U.S. and the International Atomic Energy Agency sought at one level to decipher and defuse Pyongyang's moves, North Korea's neighbours swung into considerable diplomatic action at another level.

Besides the Russo-Japanese summit, South Korea and Japan consulted each other, even as the U.S. President got in touch with his Chinese counterpart and the French Foreign Minister held talks in Seoul.

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