There can never be peace and security on the Korean peninsula while the United States "continues to threaten us with nuclear weapons", Pyongyang's ambassador to London said Monday.
North Korea was committed to denuclearising the peninsula but the secretive state would pursue its nuclear programme while Washington's "hostility" remains, Ja Song-Nam said in a rare public speech.
He said the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) had pulled out of the six-party talks on its nuclear activities because they were being treated unfairly, given they were surrounded by nuclear-armed states and countries under a nuclear umbrella.
"To eliminate the nuclear threat from the Korean peninsula and denuclearise the peninsula is the consistent policy of the DPRK," Ja, speaking through a translator, told the Royal United Services Institute security think-tank in London.
"With the continuation of the status quo, I doubt there can ever be genuine peace and security.
"We have rejected the six-party talks because the six-party talks are not based on impartiality and equality.
"If our national sovereignty is respected and if there is no nuclear threat against our country, then the nuclear weapons from the DPRK will go."
Detailing the chronology of the atomic stand-off between Pyongyang and Washington, he said: "The nuclear issue arose because the US threatened us with nuclear weapons, because the US pursued an anti-DPRK hostile policy."
Pyongyang recently said it had reached the final stages of enriching uranium and was also building more plutonium-based atomic weapons.
North Korea quit six-nation disarmament talks in April and staged its second nuclear test the following month. The forum hosted by China also includes Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
Ja said it was hypocritical to say North Korea possessing atomic weapons was a threat to international peace while Washington "threatening the DPRK with nuclear weapons" was not.
"The United States has disregarded all proposals and efforts made by the government of the DPRK," he said.
"The United States continues to threaten us with nuclear weapons and put our country on the list of nuclear pre-emptive strikes.
"We realised that the main aim of the US from the six-party talks is… to dispossess us from the nuclear deterrent we have had."
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