SEOUL
- North Korea threatened to attack rival South Korea if Seoul joined a new
round of tightened U.N. sanctions, as Washington unveiled more of its own
economic restrictions following Pyongyang's rocket launch last month.
In
a third straight day of fiery rhetoric against regional powers, the North
directed its verbal onslaught at its neighbor on Friday, saying:
"'Sanctions' mean a war and a declaration of war against us."
The
reclusive North has this week declared a boycott of all dialogue aimed at
ending its nuclear program and vowed to conduct more rocket and nuclear tests
after the Security Council censured it for a December long-range missile
launch.
"If
the puppet group of traitors takes a direct part in the U.N. 'sanctions,' the
DPRK will take strong physical counter-measures against it," the North's
Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said, referring to the South.
The
committee is the North's front for dealings with the South. DPRK is short for
the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The
U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned North Korea's December rocket
launch on Tuesday and expanded existing U.N. sanctions.
On
Thursday, the United States slapped economic sanctions on two North Korean bank
officials and a Hong Kong trading company that it accused of supporting
Pyongyang's proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The
company, Leader (Hong Kong) International Trading Ltd, was separately
blacklisted by the United Nations on Wednesday.
Seoul
has said it will look at whether there are any further sanctions that it can
implement alongside the United States, but said the focus for now is to follow
Security Council resolutions.
The
resolution said the council "deplores the violations" by North Korea
of its previous resolutions, which banned Pyongyang from conducting further
ballistic missile and nuclear tests and from importing materials and technology
for those programs. It does not impose new sanctions on Pyongyang.
The
United States had wanted to punish North Korea for the rocket launch with a
Security Council resolution that imposed entirely new sanctions against
Pyongyang, but Beijing rejected that option. China agreed to U.N. sanctions
against Pyongyang after North Korea's 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests.
Nuclear
test worry
North
Korea's rhetoric this week amounted to some of the angriest outbursts against
the outside world coming under the leadership of Kim Jong-un, who took over
after the death of his father Kim Jong-il in late 2011.
On
Thursday, the North said it would carry out further rocket launches and a
nuclear test, directing its ire at the United States, a country it called its
"sworn enemy."
U.S.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the comments were worrying.
"We
are very concerned with North Korea's continuing provocative behavior," he
said at a Pentagon news conference.
"We
are fully prepared ... to deal with any kind of provocation from the North
Koreans. But I hope in the end that they determine that it is better to make a
choice to become part of the international family."
North
Korea is not believed to have the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead
capable of hitting the continental United States, although its December launch
showed it had the capacity to deliver a rocket that could travel 10,000 km
(6,200 miles), potentially putting San Francisco in range, according to an
intelligence assessment by South Korea.
South
Korea and others who have been closely observing activities at the North's
known nuclear test grounds believe Pyongyang is technically ready to go ahead
with its third atomic test and awaiting the political decision of its leader.
The
North's committee also declared on Friday that a landmark agreement it signed
with the South in 1992 on eliminating nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula
was invalid, repeating its long-standing accusation that Seoul was colluding
with Washington.
China,
the North's sole remaining major diplomatic and economic benefactor, has urged
calm to stop the situation from deteriorating further, but an unusually prickly
comments in a state publication on Friday underlined its exasperation.
"It
seems that North Korea does not appreciate China's efforts," said the
Global Times in an editorial, a sister publication of the official People's
Daily.
"Just
let North Korea be 'angry' ... China hopes for a stable peninsula, but it's not
the end of the world if there's trouble there. This should be the baseline of
China's position." — Reuters
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