The country has condemned the United States and its allies for what it called strengthening military blocs and accelerating arms build-ups after a Nato summit this week.
Pyongyang accused Nato leaders of portraying North Korea’s exercise of its legitimate sovereign rights as a threat, the foreign ministry said yesterday, carried on state media KCNA.
The alliance demonstrated a stronger commitment to bloc-to-bloc confrontation through increased arms spending and closer military cooperation with allies in the Asia-Pacific region, the ministry said.
At the Nato summit in Turkiye on Tuesday, officials unveiled more than US$50bil (RM203bil) worth of military procurement and industrial agreements as members sought to boost defence readiness.
The move came amid sustained calls from US President Donald Trump for European allies to spend more and assume greater responsibility for the alliance’s defence commitments.
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung said on the sidelines of the summit that he hoped Seoul would expand cooperation with Nato allies in research and development, including in cutting-edge technologies and in the production of weapons systems.
North Korea said the summit showed that Nato was a body geared towards war and confrontation, pursuing what Pyongyang described as exclusive geopolitical interests at the expense of peace and security in Europe and the Asia-Pacific.
Pyongyang said a push by the West for it to abandon nuclear weapons had been irreversibly terminated.
The ministry said denuclearisation efforts should instead focus first on what it described as attempts by South Korea and Japan to pursue their own nuclear weapons under US protection, as well as the nuclear ambitions of Nato members involved in the alliance’s nuclear-sharing arrangements.
It added that North Korea would safeguard its sovereignty and security interests, as well as regional peace, through the responsible exercise of its sovereign rights.
KCNA said on Friday that North Korea had decided on measures to strengthen its nuclear forces “quantitatively and qualitatively” as leader Kim Jong-in calls for modernising its military. — Reuters
