N. Korea vows to quit six-party talks in protest at UNSC statement

(ATTN: UPDATES with detail and background)
SEOUL, April 14 (Yonhap) -- North Korea said on Tuesday that it will boycott
six-party denuclearization talks and start restoring nuclear facilities that have
been disabled under a multilateral agreement, responding to a U.N. Security
Council statement condemning its recent rocket launch.
"The six-party talks in which we are participating have become no longer
necessary," the North's Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the
official Korean Central News Agency.
The ministry said, "We will never again participate in these talks and never be
bound to any agreement of the six-party talks."
In its presidential statement adopted on Monday (New York time), the U.N.
Security Council condemned the North Korean launch as a breach of a 2006
resolution barring its ballistic missile activity, demanded the country not
conduct any further launch and return to the six-party talks aimed at ending its
nuclear weapons program.
Ahead of its rocket launch, North Korea warned that any U.N. action -- whether a
presidential statement or even an attempt to consider one -- would rupture the
six-party disarmament talks, which also involve South Korea, the U.S., China,
Japan and Russia.
The North's satellite launch is part of its peaceful space development program,
and any foreign attempt to bar it would be a "blatant hostile act" that breaches
the spirit of mutual respect of the six-way talks, the North said.
North Korea, which tested a nuclear bomb in 2006, began disabling its major
nuclear facility in Yongbyon in late 2007, and the U.S. removed the North from
its list of terrorism-sponsoring nations in October last year under the six-party
framework aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear program.
The process stalled in December, however, due to a dispute over how to verify the
North's past nuclear activity.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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