N Korea: 'Sanctions mean war'

News 24 | October 11 2004

Seoul - North Korea warned on Monday that any move by the United Nations to impose sanctions on the country to make up for stalled diplomacy would spark a "merciless war".

The warning came after US officials last month hinted at bringing North Korea to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions if it continued to cold-shoulder talks on the country's nuclear weapons drive.

"Sanctions mean a war and war does not know any mercy," said Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency.

"If the US applies more sanctions to the DPRK (North Korea) by putting the UN in motion, the DPRK will promptly and resolutely react to it with self-defensive war deterrent force."

The agency said the United States would "be wholly responsible for all ensuing fatal consequences" if war broke out.

Two years into the nuclear standoff, hectic diplomacy has yielded little.

North Korea failed to show at a fourth round of six-party talks scheduled to open in September in Beijing, saying it was staying away because of the "hostile" US policy towards Pyongyang and reports of secret nuclear experiments in South Korea.

The United States, the two Koreas, Russia, China and Japan met for three inconclusive rounds of talks in Beijing prior to the North Korean boycott.

Presidential elections

Some analysts have said Pyongyang may be waiting out the US presidential elections on November 2.

But North Korea says it does not care who is US president, and will resume talks only when the United States drops its "hostile" attitude.

Analysts and some officials have questioned whether the time may not be ripe to attempt to nudge the process ahead by putting Pyongyang under pressure from the threat of UN sanctions.

The nuclear dispute flared in October 2002 when Washington accused Pyongyang of operating a nuclear weapons programme based on enriched uranium in violation of a 1994 agreement.

In February 2003 the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declared North Korea in violation of non-proliferation accords after it pulled out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The IAEA referred the case to the UN Security Council which expressed concern but took no action.

In Seoul last week, IAEA head Mohamed El Baradei said the failure to take action had set "the worst precedent of all" to would-be nuclear proliferators, telling them there were no consequences for violations.

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