North Korea's isolated communist government said Tuesday that it had no interest in Iran-like nuclear talks with the U.S. and other world powers.
The totalitarian state's foreign ministry, in a statement, said that the situation of North Korea is quite different from that of Iran.
"The DPRK is not interested at all in the dialogue to discuss the issue of making it freeze or dismantle its nukes unilaterally first," the foreign ministry statement said, according to Yonhap. The DPRK is the acronym of Democratic People's Republic of Korea, official name of North Korea.
"The DPRK is the nuclear weapons state both in name and reality and it has interests as a nuclear weapons state," the statement, citing an unidentified foreign ministry spokesman, said.
The North Korean statement, published by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), slammed the United States for its attempts to link signing an agreement with Iran (regarding the nuclear program) with Pyongyang's nuclear program. It also criticized U.S. hostilities towards North Korea for over half a century.
"North Korea's nuclear deterrence potential is a necessary means for defending its sovereignty and vital interests in the conditions of nuclear threat from the US which has been conducting hostile policy toward Pyongyang for over half a century," the statement said, according to Tass.
North Korea's rejection comes after U.S. and South Korea urged the elusive communist nation to consider Iran-like nuclear negotiations. Iran's compliance with terms of the agreement, followed by the lifting of sanctions might give North Korea second thoughts, U.S. Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman had said on Wednesday, according to Fox News.
Nuclear negotiations between North Korea and a group of countries (U.S. Japan, Russia, South Korea and China) on Pyongyang's nuclear program have been stalled since 2009, reported Associated Press. The impoverished Asian country has conducted three successful nuke tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013.
