Pyongyang wants more balanced reports on Korean nuke dispute

JAKARTA (JP): North Korea yesterday called for more balanced news reporting on the country's nuclear dispute with the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

North Korean Ambassador Han Bong Ha said yesterday that the Western world, as well as Japan and South Korea, enjoy greater access to the international media, "resulting in imbalances of news reports, and deceptions, concerning the issue".

Han accused IAEA officials of "telling lies to the UN Security Council and the international world."

Han's statements came shortly after an announcement from general director of North Korea's General Department of Atomic Energy Pak Yong Nam warning that Pyongyang would quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) if it came under UN pressure over its suspected drive to build a nuclear bomb.

The warning, carried by the North Korean news agency KCNA, was contained in a letter to the IAEA director general, Hans Blix.

Last week, the IAEA said it would notify the Security Council that it was no longer capable of guaranteeing that North Korea had not diverted fuel from a five-megawatt nuclear plant at Yongbyon to a military program.

The watchdog agency claimed that it has tried to sample fuel rods from the reactor during a refueling program, but says North Korea has stonewalled access to the operation, the AFP news agency reported.

Dismissing the IAEA accusations, Han said North Korea had instead agreed to "fully preserve the possibility of technical ad hoc inspection of the fuel rods ... and we firmly ensure the non- diversion of the spent fuel rods."

He accused the IAEA officials of "concluding" that the possibility for later measurement of fuel rods was lost.

Chief of the Indonesian delegation to the 11th Non-Aligned Movement ministerial conference, Nana Sutresna, upon his arrival at Soekarno-Hatta international airport on Monday, told reporters that the nuclear dispute in the Korean peninsula received a great deal of attention from NAM members.

"Indonesia will avoid substantial intervention, but in its capacity as the chairman of NAM, we want to see the dispute settled peacefully," he said.

He said that since there were suggestions of support for nuclear proliferation in the region during NAM's summit in Jakarta in 1992, member countries felt obliged to see that the dispute ended.

Nana said participants of the ministerial conference finally came to a compromise statement in which NAM could on the one hand show its ability to keep track of the dispute settlement talks, and on the other promote cooperation and dialog between the U.S., North Korea and the IAEA.

The UN Security Council on Monday launching informal consultations for possible economic sanctions against North Korea.

Han said the agency, in its capacity as an international body, should not be using double standards in solving nuclear-related problems.

He said Japan, where 75 kilograms of plutonium was recently found, has been spared from IAEA and U.S. scrutiny. "The plutonium is enough to make nine atomic bombs. But the IAEA acted as if they did not to know this and refused to make further investigations," he said.

"We now know that the U.S. is using the (IAEA) organization as an instrument to achieve its self-interest," he added. (pwn)