North Korea Promises to Use Nuclear Energy for Peaceful Purposes

Pyongyang promises to independently develop power engineering for peaceful purposes, Kim Ki, the deputy chairman of the DPRK State Atomic Power Energy Committee, said on the North Korean Central Radio.

At the same time he threatened that the top officials and workers of the Committee were fully resolved to reply with a merciless strike to the intrigues of US imperialism and the forces behind it.

Earlier, the North Korean mass media warned Washington that the retribution would follow if the US started war against the DPRK. "We will selflessly rebuff by mobilizing all the means and methods, and will not go to any compromises and concessions to those who encroach upon our national sovereignty and the right to existence," stressed the Committee's chairman.

He also confirmed that North Korea rejected control of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) since Pyongyang believes it represents the US interests only.

Last week the DPRK declared it would withdraw from the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and resume its nuclear programme. Simultaneously, the country's government stressed it was not going to create nuclear weapons.

Pyongyang explains that the old experimental nuclear reactor in Yongbyon "has been unfrozen" because the USA has not fulfilled its promise to build by 2003 a new atomic power station in North Korea and refused to hold negotiations.

On Saturday, January 11th, Hun Bong Chun, the North Korean power and coal minister, also pointed to the peaceful nature of nuclear developments in the country.