FM SPOKESMAN ACCUSES U.S. OF SHUNNING CONCLUSION OF PEACE TREATY

A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of the DPRK Friday gave the following answer to the question raised by KCNA as regards the U.S. attempt to shun the conclusion of peace treaty:

Days ago the special representative for North Korea policy of the U.S. Department of State said at a seminar that the DPRK had a wrong order in proposing conclusion of peace treaty, adding that there should be important progress in denuclearization before replacing the Armistice

Agreement by peace treaty.

This is the height of impudence.

In the past the DPRK discussed the issue of denuclearization first and held many talks on simultaneously discussing the nuclear issue and the matter of ensuring peace, but they yielded no fruits.

This is attributable to the unchanged hostile relations between the DPRK and the U.S.

The U.S. must know the fact that the nuclear issue surfaced in the 1980s owing to the DPRK-U.S. belligerent relations that started in the 1950s. It claimed that peace treaty can be concluded only after denuclearization. Its insistence on the order of discussion is, in the final analysis, little short of refusing to roll back its hostile policy toward the DPRK.

The historical experience showed that it is impossible to solve any problem without fundamentally settling the hostile relations between the DPRK and the U.S. by replacing the AA by peace treaty.

If peace treaty is concluded and there exists confidence that the U.S. is no longer the enemy of the DPRK, it will be possible to solve all other problems.

The U.S. should not misjudge the good-will of the DPRK calling for the conclusion of peace treaty but think twice over the consequences to be entailed by turning its face away from the proposal.