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U.S. Under Secretary of State for Security and Arms Control was “unwell” |
SEOUL,
January 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Continued American
aggression will lead to war on the Korean peninsula, Pyongyang’s
official news media said Thursday, January 23, as it stepped up the
rhetoric against the United States.
The
Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the ruling Workers Party,
lashed out at reports that the United States and South Korea were
establishing military plans for any potential conflict on the Korean
peninsula, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
“(The
plan) is nothing but a scenario of aggression that makes the outbreak
of the second Korean war a fait accompli,” the Rodong Sinmun said in
an editorial.
The
paper said that North Korea was “ready both for dialogue and war”.
“Preemptive
strike”
“Anyone
who attempts to make a preemptive strike at the DPRK (North Korea) can
never go safe,” it warned.
The
fresh outburst came as a senior five-man North Korean delegation was
in Seoul offering public reassurances that there would be no military
conflict on the Korean peninsula.
“The
position of the DPRK (North Korea) is that it will not bring the
stand-off with the United States to the worst-case scenario,” an
unidentified North Korean delegate to the talks said, according to the
Seoul’s Hankyoreh daily.
“You
don’t have to worry about it too much.”
The
term “worst-case scenario” has been used here to describe a war
breaking out on the Korean peninsula.
The
talks are being held against the backdrop of international fears over
North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, after the collapse of a 1994
agreement between Pyongyang and Washington that froze the Stalinist
state’s atomic program.
The
United States has led an international drive for the crisis to be
brought before the United Nations Security Council, a push that has so
far been unsuccessful.
Pyongyang’s
Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) launched a separate broadside on
Thursday, accusing the United States of having no intention of
establishing a bilateral dialogue to solve the crisis.
It
referred to recent comments made by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld that “all options were on the table”, in regards to North
Korea.
“His
remarks prove that the U.S. is paying lip service to ‘dialogue’
and ‘peaceful settlement’... and its hostile policy to isolate and
stifle it (North Korea) remains unchanged,” KCNA said.
The
report said North Korea was convinced the United States was “waiting
for a chance to invade it”.
U.S.
Arms Control Chief in Japan
Meanwhile,
U.S. arms control chief John Bolton arrived in Tokyo Thursday on the
final leg of an Asian trip to discuss the North Korea’s crisis.
But
meetings scheduled for later in the day with Foreign Minister Yoriko
Kawaguchi and vice foreign minister Yukio Takeuchi were called off
because the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Security and Arms
Control was unwell, U.S. and Japanese officials said.
“Mr
Bolton is ill and has had to alter his schedule,” a spokesman for
the United States embassy said.
A
spokeswoman for the Japanese foreign ministry said it was undecided
whether Bolton would meet with Kawaguchi and Takeuchi on Friday.
He
is still scheduled to attend a Japan-U.S. meeting on arms control and
nuclear non-proliferation Friday, however.
North
Korea expelled IAEA inspectors on New Year’s Eve and withdrew from
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty last month as a response to U.S.
cut of fuel.
Pyongyang has said that it would regard U.N.
sanctions as a declaration of war
