(Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Friday lashed out at the United States for developing its Missile Defense System (MD), saying Washington's true aim of developing the MD is to achieve "world dominance." "It is the calculation of the U.S. that if large powers in Eurasia become embroiled in an arms race to cope with it this would be good for weakening them and if this does not happen, it would be advisable for it to unilaterally perfect and expand the MD so as to neutralize the nuclear retaliatory capacity of other large powers and maintain its military hegemony unchallenged," said the statement issued by the spokesman of the DPRK's foreign ministry, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. The DPRK said the United States used the so-called missile threat from the DPRK and Iran as a pretext to develop MD. "Had the U.S. felt really threatened by the missile capacity of the DPRK, it would already have had several opportunities to seek a negotiated settlement of the issue on an equal footing, not by wasting a stupendous amount of funds," said the statement.
The DPRK claimed that the United States passed up the opportunities of negotiating with the DPRK and "pushing forward with the MD in the direction of sieging Eurasia from both east and west." "It is clear even from the scale of the MD in the present phase that this huge defence network is not targeted against just a few small countries," said the statement.
DPRK vowed that it was forced to "bolster its deterrent for self-defense" to cope with the escalating arms race due to the United States' moves. The United States has planned to install parts of its anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, a move strongly opposed by Russia, which warned that the project could trigger a new arms race.
Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed at the G8 summit in Germany last week that the United States and Russia work together to set up the defense system, which would be based at a Russian radar base in Azerbaijan instead of in central Europe.