North Korea slams NATO summit, calls on US allies to start denuclearisation
- North Korea on Saturday criticized the United States and its allies for bolstering military blocs and speeding up arms buildups in the wake of a NATO meeting this week.
North Korea’s foreign ministry claimed in a statement broadcast by official media KCNA that NATO leaders were misrepresenting its exercise of its lawful sovereign rights as a threat.
The ministry claimed the alliance exhibited a deeper commitment to bloc-to-bloc confrontation with higher arms spending and closer military coordination with allies in the Asia-Pacific area.
U.S. President Donald Trump continues to pressure European members to pay more of the alliance’s defense cost but NATO officials unveiled more than $50 billion in military procurement and industrial deals during a meeting in Turkey on Tuesday.
South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung of rival Pyongyang stated on the sidelines of the meeting that he hoped Seoul would increase cooperation with NATO partners in research and development, especially cutting-edge technologies, and in production of weapons systems.
The meeting demonstrated NATO was a group aimed at war and confrontation pursuing what Pyongyang called exclusive geopolitical objectives at the price of peace and security in Europe and the Asia-Pacific, North Korea said.
Pyongyang believes denuclearisation efforts should focus first on what it described as attempts by South Korea and Japan to pursue their own nuclear weapons under U.S. protection, as well as the nuclear ambitions of NATO members participating in the alliance’s nuclear-sharing arrangements, the ministry said.
It claimed North Korea would defend its sovereignty and security interests and regional peace through the “responsible exercise of its sovereign rights.”
North Korea has decided on measures to boost its nuclear forces “quantitatively and qualitatively”, KCNA stated Friday, as leader Kim Jong Un called for modernisation of the military.
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