North Korea says it has no interest in a nuclear deal like the one struck last week between Iran and world powers.
The North Korean and Iranian situations are “quite different,” a spokesman for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
The official reiterated North Korea’s assertion that it is a “nuclear weapons state both in name and reality.”
“The DPRK is not interested at all in the dialogue to discuss the issue of making it freeze or dismantle its nukes unilaterally first,” the spokesperson said, using an abbreviation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the country’s official name.
North Korea’s nuclear deterrent is “not a plaything to be put on the negotiating table, as it is the essential means to protect its sovereignty and vital rights from the U.S. nuclear threat and hostile policy which have lasted for more than half a century,” the official said.
North Korean program more advanced
The agreement reached between Iran, the United States and several other nations aims to prevent Tehran developing a nuclear bomb in return for relief from economic sanctions.
But North Korea’s nuclear program is a lot more advanced than Iran’s. It has carried out three underground nuclear tests and is believed by many experts to already possess nuclear weapons in some form.
Former leader Kim Jong Il pressed ahead with the country’s nuclear program after reneging on an agreement with the United States and other nations to disable its nuclear facilities.
International negotiations over the North Korean nuclear program, known as the Six-Party Talks, broke down in 2008. The Pyongyang regime has been hit with economic sanctions over its nuclear and rocket tests.
U.S. stance on North Korea unchanged
The United States has said that North Korea needs to commit to denuclearization as part of any resumption of the negotiations.
“Thus far, they’ve shown absolutely no interest in pursuing that process through the Six-Party talks,” U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said at a regular briefing last week.
Speaking the day after the announcement of the agreement with Iran, he said it had no bearing on the North Korean situation.
“This deal is about Iran and preventing Iran from possessing a nuclear weapon,” Kirby said. “Our position on the North has not changed and will not change as a result of this.”