North Korea Calls Off U.N. Meeting Wednesday March 26, 2003 4:30 AM SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea cut off the only regular military contact with the U.S.-led United Nations Command on Wednesday, after accusing the United States of planning an attack. The announcement came as lawmakers from across North Korea convened the country's rubber-stamp parliament amid heightened tension over the communist state's suspected nuclear weapons program. In a telephone message to the U.N. Command, the North's Korea People's Army said it will no longer send its delegates to the liaison-officers' meeting at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom. ``It is meaningless to sit together with the U.S. forces side to discuss any issue as long as it remains arrogant,'' the North's official news agency KCNA quoted the North Korean message as saying. The U.N. Command had no immediate comment. The 687-member Supreme People's Assembly usually meets once or twice a year in Pyongyang to approve a new budget. North Korea's Central Radio reported that at the opening of the parliamentary session, the deputies paid tribute to the statues of leader Kim Jong Il and his father, late President Kim Il Sung, vowing to remain loyal to the totalitarian regime. On Tuesday, North Korea said it was boosting its defenses, claiming U.S. forces may attack and spark a ``second Iraqi crisis'' on the Korean Peninsula. In Japan, space agency officials were preparing to launch their first spy satellite into orbit on Friday. North Korea has condemned the move, prompting fears it may retaliate and test-fire a long-range missile. North Korea accuses Washington of inciting a dispute over its alleged programs to develop nuclear weapons to create an excuse for invasion. President Bush has branded the North part of an ``axis of evil'' with Iraq and Iran. Washington says it seeks a diplomatic solution to the crisis - but Bush has said that if diplomacy fails a military solution may be considered. Also Wednesday, South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan left for Washington to discuss North Korea with Secretary of State Colin Powell and other U.S. officials. During his four-day visit, Yoon also hopes to arrange a summit in the United States between President Roh Moo-hyun and Bush, which he said would take place in late April at the earliest. With the United States focused on Iraq, experts fear North Korea might use the opportunity to reprocess spent nuclear fuel to make atomic bombs. That would be viewed as an attempt to force Washington into direct negotiations. The United States only wants talks with the North in a multilateral setting. The standoff flared in October when U.S. officials said Pyongyang admitted having a secret nuclear program in violation of a 1994 pact. Washington and its allies suspended oil shipments, promised under that agreement, and Pyongyang retaliated by withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and taking steps to reactivate a nuclear facility capable of producing several bombs within months.
This is why we must take out Iraq first....we can not afford to have 2 North Koreas running around with nukes. DD
N Korea is just using this as an excuse to keep up their nuclear weapons development. If the UN had any guts they would demand that N Korea end their weapons development instead of letting the U.S. do their job for them. All of thise countries trying to develop nuclear weapons, and for what?
Anybody else here wondering if the North Korean government just wants money? I expect to see Tony Soprano show up any day now saying that his "client's" money is late.
Of course they want to extort money (and food). But they used the blackmail tactic so many times that it's difficult to know when to take them seriously. They certainly want to extort, but maybe they also fear attack.
