A Pakistani scientist's confession that he sold nuclear weapons technology to North Korea was a "sheer lie" cooked up by the US to justify an invasion, North Korea said yesterday.
The father of Pakistan's nuclear-arms program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, said last week he had sold nuclear secrets to Libya and two countries that US President George W. Bush has labelled part of an "axis of evil," North Korea and Iran.
Khan's confession came three weeks before North Korea was scheduled to join the US, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea for a second round of talks aimed at ending the North's nuclear-weapons program.
North Korea has long denied US assertions that it had been pursuing an atomic-weapons program using highly enriched uranium.
US officials said the North Koreans had admitted to such a program in October 2002 when confronted with evidence of efforts to procure equipment to enrich uranium for bombs.
The confrontation led to North Korea withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and taking plutonium rods out of storage, an essential step to developing weapons.
In the North's first reaction to the revelations out of Pakistan, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said the US had fabricated Khan's story to derail the nuclear talks and lay the groundwork for an Iraq-style invasion.
"The United States is now hyping the story about the transfer of nuclear technology to the DPRK by a Pakistani scientist in a bid to make the DPRK's enriched uranium programme sound plausible," said the spokesman in a statement published by Pyongyang's official KCNA news agency.
"This is nothing but a mean and groundless propaganda," the spokesman said, adding that Khan's disclosures are such a "sheer lie that the DPRK does not bat an eyelid even a bit."
DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official title.
"This is aimed to scour the interior of the DPRK on the basis of a legitimate mandate and attack it just as what it did in Iraq in the end and invent a pretext to escape isolation and scuttle the projected six-way talks," it said.
Khan's admission he had sold the nuclear-weapons technology made North Korea "realize once again what a just measure it took to build nuclear deterrent force," the spokesman said.
South Korean analysts have said North Korea had suffered a big setback from Khan's disclosures, with some in the South worrying that continued denials by the North might ruin prospects for the long-awaited second round of six-party talks in Beijing.
After confessing on television to blackmarket nuclear technology dealings and absolving Pakistan's military and government of blame, Khan was pardoned by President Pervez Musharraf in an apparent effort to lay the controversy to rest.
The US has strongly defended Musharraf's handling of the scandal, reflecting a balancing act between its usual aggressive stance on punishing proliferation and its firm support for the Pakistani leader.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
Two former Chilean ministers are among four candidates competing this weekend for the presidential nomination of the left ahead of November elections dominated by rising levels of violent crime. More than 15 million voters are eligible to choose today between former minister of labor Jeannette Jara, former minister of the interior Carolina Toha and two members of parliament, Gonzalo Winter and Jaime Mulet, to represent the left against a resurgent right. The primary is open to members of the parties within Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s ruling left-wing coalition and other voters who are not affiliated with specific parties. A recent poll by the
TENSIONS HIGH: For more than half a year, students have organized protests around the country, while the Serbian presaident said they are part of a foreign plot About 140,000 protesters rallied in Belgrade, the largest turnout over the past few months, as student-led demonstrations mount pressure on the populist government to call early elections. The rally was one of the largest in more than half a year student-led actions, which began in November last year after the roof of a train station collapsed in the northern city of Novi Sad, killing 16 people — a tragedy widely blamed on entrenched corruption. On Saturday, a sea of protesters filled Belgrade’s largest square and poured into several surrounding streets. The independent protest monitor Archive of Public Gatherings estimated the
Irish-language rap group Kneecap on Saturday gave an impassioned performance for tens of thousands of fans at the Glastonbury Festival despite criticism by British politicians and a terror charge for one of the trio. Liam Og O hAnnaidh, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged under the UK’s Terrorism Act with supporting a proscribed organization for allegedly waving a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London in November last year. The rapper, who was charged under the anglicized version of his name, Liam O’Hanna, is on unconditional bail before a further court hearing in August. “Glastonbury,
RSS