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| Wednesday, 5 May 2004 |
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Pyongyang 'would never sell nuke weapons to al-Qaeda' LONDON, Tuesday (AFP) North Korea would never sell nuclear missiles to al-Qaeda and does not want to suffer the same fate as Iraq, according to high-ranking officials quoted Tuesday in London's Financial Times newspaper. The FT article was based on a two-hour interview in Pyongyang between Selig Harrison - a US expert on North Korea - and high-ranking North Korean officials including Kim Yong-nam, President Kim Jong-il's deputy, and foreign minister Paik Nam-soon. "We're entitled to sell missiles to earn foreign exchange," Kim Yong-nam said, according to the FT report. "But in regard to nuclear material our policy past, present and future is that we would never allow such transfers to al-Qaeda or anyone else. Never." A nuclear impasse between Washington and Pyongyang erupted in October 2002 when the US charged that North Korea had not kept its part of the bargain by breaking a 1994 nuclear freeze and launching a secret nuclear weapons program. The United States said it had learned "conclusively" that North Korea was pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program based not on plutonium but on uranium enrichment. "We want a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, and we have no intention of getting engaged in a nuclear arms rrace with neighbouring nations," said Kim Yong-nam, according to the FT report. "The only reason we are developing nuclear weapons is to deter an American pre-emptive attack," he said. "After all, we have been singled out as the target for such an attack and we are the justification for the development of a new generation of US nuclear weapons. "We don't want to suffer the fate of Iraq," he was quoted as saying. |
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