North Korea yesterday lashed out at US President George W. Bush for turning "a peaceful world into a pandemonium unprecedented in history," and reaffirmed it won't attend preparatory meetings ahead of planned nuclear disarmament talks.
Last week, Bush referred to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il as a "tyrant," and said he had embarked on six-nation talks to convince Kim to disarm because the US couldn't do it alone.
The next round of talks -- which also include China, Japan, Russia and South Korea -- are supposed to take place by the end of next month. But North Korea has recently thrown those plans into doubt by saying it won't attend working meetings to prepare for the larger talks.
Alleging that Bush has ramped up his hostile rhetoric, an unnamed spokesman from the North Korean Foreign Ministry said Bush's comments "clearly disclosed that it is the real intention of the US to bring down the system in the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] by force though everything in the world may change."
"The meeting of the working group for the six-party talks can not be opened because the US has become more undisguised in pursuing its hostile policy towards the DPRK, backtracking from all agreements and common understanding reached at the third round of the six-party talks," the statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency said.
In Seoul, officials said South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo-hyuck will visit China and Japan this week to discuss the North Korean nuclear issue, including resuming the preparatory talks.
Some media reports have speculated the North is seeking to delay the next round of talks until after the US presidential election in November, hoping to get a better offer from a new administration -- something the North has denied.
The US has pushed for North Korea to fully disclose all of its nuclear activities and allow outside monitoring before it receives concessions. The North wants energy aid, lifting of economic sanctions and removal from Washington's list of state sponsors of terrorism.
The North also leveled personal attacks at Bush, calling him "a political imbecile bereft of even elementary morality as a human being and a bad guy, much less being a politician" and said he had started wars in Iraq and elsewhere "to commit genocide as he pleases."
"Bush is a tyrant that puts Hitler into the shade and his group of such tyrants is a typical gang of political gangsters," the statement said.
It added that North Korea would increase its defense capabilities a "thousand times."
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
Pulled from the mud as an infant after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and reunited with his parents following an emotional court battle, the boy once known as “Baby 81” is now a 20-year-old dreaming of higher education. Jayarasa Abilash’s story symbolized that of the families torn apart by one of the worst natural calamities in modern history, but it also offered hope. More than 35,000 people in Sri Lanka were killed, with others missing. The two-month-old was washed away by the tsunami in eastern Sri Lanka and found some distance from home by rescuers. At the hospital, he was
Two US Navy pilots were shot down yesterday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of US targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one sustaining minor injuries. However, the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area. The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting Yemen’s Houthi rebels at the
MILITANTS TARGETED: The US said its forces had killed an IS leader in Deir Ezzor, as it increased its activities in the region following al-Assad’s overthrow Washington is scrapping a long-standing reward for the arrest of Syria’s new leader, a senior US diplomat said on Friday following “positive messages” from a first meeting that included a promise to fight terrorism. Barbara Leaf, Washington’s top diplomat for the Middle East, made the comments after her meeting with Ahmed al-Sharaa in Damascus — the first formal mission to Syria’s capital by US diplomats since the early days of Syria’s civil war. The lightning offensive that toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad on Dec. 8 was led by the Muslim Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in al-Qaeda’s
RSS