SEOUL: North Korea said its status as a nuclear-armed state is "permanently enshrined" in its law and "irreversible", state media reported, condemning the United States for demanding its denuclearisation. "Recently, at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors, the US once again committed a grave political provocation by branding our possession of nuclear weapons as illegal and clamouring about denuclearisation," the North's UN mission said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
The status of North Korea "as a nuclear-armed state, enshrined permanently in the nation's supreme and fundamental law, has become irreversible", the statement said, noting the country has not had "official relations" with the nuclear watchdog for more than 30 years.
The IAEA has "neither the legal authority nor the moral justification to interfere in the internal affairs of a nuclear-armed state that exists outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty", it said.
Pyongyang will "firmly oppose and reject any attempt to alter the current status of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and, as a responsible nuclear-armed state", the statement added, using the official name of North Korea. — AFP
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