North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui on Friday denounced the Group of Seven (G-7) for “interfering in internal affairs and refusing to recognize the country as a nuclear weapons state,” the official media reported.
“G-7 has neither authority nor qualification to say this or that about the DPRK’s exercise of its sovereignty and its national status,” Choe said in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency.
“The position of the DPRK as a world-class nuclear power is final and irreversible” and “will remain as an undeniable and stark reality,” she said. DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name.
Choe issued the statement following the G-7 Foreign Ministers’ joint communique earlier this week, which condemned the North’s recent ballistic missile tests and said North Korea “cannot and will never” have the status of a nuclear weapons state under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The G-7 consists of Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and the US.
She also stressed that the North’s position as a nuclear weapons state is not a thing “granted or recognized by anyone” but was “established along with the existence of the actual nuclear deterrence and fixed by the law” on the state nuclear force policy.
In addition, the minister warned that her country will take “strong counteraction” if G-7 countries show any move to “infringe” on the North’s sovereignty and fundamental interests.
Source: Kuwait News Agency