N. Korea blasts U.N. over 'unfair' punishment for rocket launch

SEOUL, May 4 (Yonhap) -- North Korea on Monday accused the United Nations of
being unfair to countries not aligned with the United States, citing its
condemnation of Pyongyang's April 5 rocket launch as evidence.

Pyongyang withdrew from six-nation nuclear disarmament talks in protest of the
U.N. Security Council's rebuke of the launch. The North also said it would
conduct a second nuclear test and has begun reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods,
a process which extracts plutonium used to make nuclear bombs. North Korea tested
its first nuclear device in 2006.
The Security Council "continues to adopt unjust documents under U.S.
instigation," and its April 13 presidential statement condemning the North Korean
launch is "obvious evidence" of its unfairness, the Rodong Sinmun, a major
newspaper published by the Workers' Party, said in a commentary carried by the
Korean Central News Agency.
Pyongyang says the launch sent a satellite into orbit. South Korea, the U.S. and
Japan view it as a disguised long-range missile test and support U.N. sanctions.
The Security Council's sanctions committee froze foreign assets of three firms in
North Korea suspected of financing the country's nuclear and missile activities.
The paper noted the Security Council has never taken issue with a satellite
launch and blasted its punishment of North Korea's as an "unfair, extreme
application of double standards and an act of despotism."
"As long as the U.S. occupies U.N. main agencies and continues its unilateralism
... the U.N. can never guarantee world peace and safety and principles of world
justice and fairness can never be observed," it said.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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