Nuclear Deal a 'Lie' Says North Korea

11/02/2004| IslamWeb

A Pakistani scientist's confession that he sold nuclear weapons technology to North Korea was a lie cooked up by the United States to justify an invasion, the Communist North said yesterday. The father of Pakistan's nuclear arms programme, Abdul Qadeer Khan, said last week he had sold nuclear secrets to Libya and two countries President George W Bush has labelled part of an "axis of evil", North Korea and Iran. Khan's confession came three weeks before North Korea was scheduled to join the US, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea for a second round of talks to try to end the North's nuclear weapons programmes. In the North's first reaction, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said the US had fabricated Khan's story to derail the nuclear talks and lay the groundwork for an Iraq-style invasion. "The United States is now hyping the story about the transfer of nuclear technology to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) by a Pakistani scientist in a bid to make the DPRK's enriched uranium programme sound plausible," said the spokesman in a statement published by Pyongyang's official KCNA news agency. "This is nothing but a mean and groundless propaganda," the spokesman said, adding Khan's disclosures were such a "sheer lie that the DPRK does not bat an eyelid even a bit". North Korea has long denied it has been pursuing an atomic weapons programme using highly enriched uranium, as the United States has alleged. North Korea said it has won Chinese support for its proposal to freeze its nuclear weapons programs in exchange for economic concessions from the United States. A North Korean foreign ministry spokesman quoted Chinese officials as saying the proposal to help end the nuclear crisis was reasonable. China and North Korea sides "agreed to take joint actions to make substantial progress in the next round of six-nation talks," North Korea's official KCNA news agency quoted the unnamed spokesman as saying. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Abdul Qadeer Khan. (AFP/File/Tanveer Mughal)