North Korea Denounces `Hostile' Sanctions by U.S., Urges Six-Party Talks

[AdminOnline]

North Korea denounced new U.S. sanctions against its regime and said next week’s naval exercises involving South Korean and American forces posed a threat to regional peace.

“The sanctions are a direct expression of intensified hostility,” Ri Tong Il, a member of North Korea’s delegation to Asia’s biggest security forum in Hanoi, said today. “The U.S. should make concrete steps toward engaging in dialogue if it is serious about ridding the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons.”

Ri’s comments coincided with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s arrival in the Vietnamese capital to attend the same Asean Regional Forum. Clinton announced the new trade restrictions against North Korea yesterday during a visit to Seoul, where she urged the regime to acknowledge that it sank a South Korean warship in March, killing 46 sailors.

North Korea remains committed to returning to the six-party talks on its nuclear weapons program, Ri said. All members of that group, which hasn’t met since December 2008, will be at tomorrow’s conference.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung Hwan has rejected the offer of talks as a ploy to divert attention from the attack on the corvette Cheonan, which an international panel blamed on Kim Jong Il’s regime.

Clinton said yesterday the new sanctions will target government officials and the foreign banks that help sustain the country’s weapons industry. North Korea’s economy has been battered by existing trade restrictions, including those imposed by the United Nations after nuclear tests in 2006 and last year.

Military Drills

North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun arrived in Hanoi last night and held bilateral meetings with his counterparts from China and Thailand today. He declined to comment to reporters.

The U.S. sanctions came on the heels of an announcement of joint military drills between the U.S. and South Korea off the peninsula’s east coast. The two countries, which fought against North Korea during the 1950-53 war, plan to hold more exercises in coming months.

“The joint military drills are not only a grave threat to peace and stability of the Korean peninsula, but also the region as a whole,” Ri said.

Source- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-22/north-korea-says-latest-u-s-sanctions-are-tantamount-to-hostile-policy-.html

[bluesummer]

Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish some noble North Korean citizen, angered by his government's stupidity and corruption and over the deterioration of his country, would go apeshit and blow up all of the influential leaders of that country as they sat in some meeting.

Just a random thought.