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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| U.S. Commitment to Nuke Accord Questioned |
| 2005-10-18 |
| North Korea said Tuesday it doubted Washington's commitment to a landmark accord reached at the last nuclear talks, criticizing a recent U.S. allegation that the communist nation was involved in money laundering activities. The U.S. Treasury Department last month accused a Macau-based bank of helping North Korean customers distribute counterfeit currency and engage in other illegal activities. Banco Delta Asia has denied the allegations, saying its relationships with North Korean clients were legitimate and purely commercial. On Tuesday, an unnamed spokesman for the North's Foreign Ministry said the U.S. allegation was 'nothing but a version of the trite psychological warfare conducted by the U.S. administration to justify its hostile policy' toward the North. 'This compels the DPRK to suspect whether the Bush administration has the willingness to implement the joint statement of the six-party talks or not,' said the spokesman, according to the North's Korean Central News Agency. The DPRK is the acronym for the communist nation's official name _ the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Negotiators at the last round of talks in Beijing reached a breakthrough accord, in which the North agreed to abandon all of its nuclear weapons and nuclear programs. The next round of talks _ which also involve China, Japan, Russia and South Korea _ were scheduled for November, but no date has been set. 'If the U.S. persists in its hostile acts ... the DPRK will be left with no option but to take self-defense steps to cope with those acts,' the spokesman said, without explaining what those steps would be. Pyongyang routinely accuses Washington of being hostile to its communist regime. Washington has repeatedly said it has no intention of attacking the North. |
| Posted by:Steve |