North Korea Rejects Nuclear Talks, Blames U.S.

North Korea's deputy foreign minister, Choe Su Hon, blamed what he called the ‘vicious, hostile policies’ of the United States for what he called ‘touch and go critical tension on the Korean peninsula.’ Referring to his country by its initials DPRK, Choe said Washington is purposely stoking tensions in a strategy aimed at world domination. ‘The United States aims to strengthen its armed forces in this region, and thus contain the ever-growing-strong DPRK and neighboring countries within its world supremacy strategy. This is what the real intention of the United States is,’ he said. He accused the United States of imposing unjustified financial sanctions on Pyongyang, and said under such conditions, North Korea would not return to the stalled six-party talks on its nuclear program. ‘It is quite preposterous that the DPRK, under the groundless U.S. sanctions, takes part in the talks of discussing its own nuclear abandonment. This is the matter of principle which cannot tolerate even the slightest concession,’ he said.