{"id":1572,"date":"2013-03-18T12:17:20","date_gmt":"2013-03-18T12:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/up\/wordpress\/2013\/03\/18\/n-korea-says-nukes-are-not-a-bargaining-chip-for-aid\/"},"modified":"2022-10-29T16:24:50","modified_gmt":"2022-10-29T15:24:50","slug":"n-korea-says-nukes-are-not-a-bargaining-chip-for-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/n-korea-says-nukes-are-not-a-bargaining-chip-for-aid\/","title":{"rendered":"N. Korea says nukes are not a bargaining chip for aid"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The North’s foreign ministry, in a statement carried by state TV, rejected suggestions that the impoverished state was using its weapons programme as a way of bullying neighbours into offering much-needed aid. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The US is seriously mistaken if it thinks that the (North) had access to nukes as a bargaining chip to barter them for what it called economic reward,” it said.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The comments came days after the US National Security Advisor Tom Donilon said Washington was willing to hold “authentic negotiations” with the North if it changed its behaviour.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“To get the assistance it desperately needs and the respect it claims it wants, North Korea will have to change course,” he said last week.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

But the North Sunday called its atomic weaponry a “treasured sword” to protect itself from what it called a hostile US policy.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US “temptation” may work on other countries “but it sounds nonsensical” to the North, the foreign ministry statement said.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The (North) would like to re-clarify its unshakeable principled stand on its nuclear deterrence for self-defence.”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last month’s test, its most powerful to date, prompted the United Nations to further tighten sanctions imposed following previous nuclear tests and long-range rocket launches in 2006 and 2009.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tougher sanctions, and an ongoing South Korean-US military exercise, sparked an angry response from Pyongyang, which said it was tearing up the armistice that ended the Korean War and ending non-aggression pacts with Seoul.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The country has suffered chronic food and fuel shortages for decades, with the situation exacerbated by floods, droughts, mismanagement and global sanctions.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

International food aid, especially from South Korea and the US, has been drastically cut over the past several years amid tensions over the North’s nuclear and missile programmes.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A six-nation aid-for-denuclearisation forum on the North, involving the two Koreas, China, Japan, the US and Russia, have been at a standstill since the last meeting in December 2008.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost 28 percent of the North’s children aged under five are stunted from malnutrition, a 2012 UN national nutrition survey showed.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The North’s foreign ministry, in a statement carried by state TV, rejected suggestions that the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,21],"tags":[69,1900,391,1899,957,115,1897,307,1898,751],"class_list":["post-1572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-ynews3","tag-a","tag-aid","tag-are","tag-bargaining","tag-chip","tag-for","tag-n-korea","tag-not","tag-nukes","tag-says"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3299,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572\/revisions\/3299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}