North Korea will seek to further increase its nuclear deterrent capability in the face of a mounting US threat to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against it, according to an editorial in North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun Monday.

It said that the growing threat of such an attack on North Korea and on non-nuclear states under the pretext of preventing terrorism and deterring war compels North Korea to seek measures to counter the threat.

The article stated that the US is bent on nuclear tests while threatening non-nuclear states. “This is a shameless and high-handed practice to make nuclear attacks on countries that are out of their favor by developing new nuclear weapons.”

During the recent six-party talks on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, the US side used the issues of enriched uranium programs and secret sales of uranium hexafluoride to label North Korea a “proliferator of nuclear materials.”

Washington announced the suspension of heavy oil deliveries to North Korea in November 2002 after accusing the country of developing an enriched uranium program. It halted construction of a Light Water Reactor (LWR) in December 2003.

Pyongyang considers the US moves a unilateral and complete violation of the North Korea-US Agreed Framework adopted in October 1994. Under the agreement, North Korea promised to freeze its nuclear facilities in exchange for US help to build two LWRs and an annual supply of 500,000 tons of oil.

Rodong Sinmun warned that the United States “had better abandon its nuclear plot against North Korea, judging the realities with a cool head.”

China has been working since last year to broker the six-party talks. The first round of talks between North and South Korea, China, the United States, Russia and Japan was held in Beijing last August and the second in February.

At last month’s first working group meeting in Beijing, negotiators agreed the third round of talks would be held in the Chinese capital before the end of June.

“The third round of six-party talks is very important,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao on Saturday, adding that the key to success lies in whether all parties concerned will be fully prepared before the talks.

With “comparatively big differences” remaining between the parties concerned, China hopes they will continue to take a constructive attitude, show flexibility to the fullest, seek and expand their common ground, narrow their differences, and work actively to find solutions, the spokesman said.

(Xinhua News Agency, China Daily June 8, 2004)