TOKYO — North Korea declared Saturday that it could no longer “even think about giving up its nuclear weapons” after the U.N. Security Council’s imposition of sanctions for its second nuclear test.
Declaring that it would meet sanctions with “retaliation,” the government of Kim Jong-Il vowed to “weaponize” all the plutonium it could extract from used fuel rods at its partially disabled Yongbyon nuclear plant.
It also pledged to start enriching uranium to make more nuclear weapons. For the past seven years, North Korea has adamantly denied U.S. intelligence reports that it even had a uranium-enrichment program.
“It makes no difference to North Korea whether its nuclear status is recognized or not,” the government said in a statement by its official news agency. “It has become an absolutely impossible option for North Korea to even think about giving up its nuclear weapons.”
The 15-member Security Council unanimously passed a resolution Friday that imposed broad financial, trade and military sanctions on North Korea, while also calling on states, for the first time, to seize banned weapons and technology from the North that are found aboard ships on the high seas.
North Korea seemed Saturday to have interpreted the seizure resolution as a “blockade.” But at the insistence of China and Russia, the North’s traditional allies, the resolution does not authorize the use of military action to enforce any seizure that a North Korean vessel might resist, nor does it restrict shipments of food or other nonmilitary goods.
“An attempted blockade of any kind by the United States and its followers will be regarded as an act of war and met with a decisive military response,” North Korea said.
North Korea also said Saturday that the spent fuel rods at its Yongbyon reactor are being reprocessed, with all the resulting plutonium to be used in nuclear weapons.
