DPRK betting on nuclear weapons, sees them as deterrent, Moscow says
MOSCOW. Sept 12 (Interfax) - North Korea sees nuclear missile weapons as a deterrent, Mikhail Ulyanov, Director of the Foreign Ministry Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control, said.
"We clearly condemn the line of behavior chosen by Pyongyang, but one should be aware that in the absence of genuinely reliable international guarantees of its national security, the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] bets on nuclear missile weapons, seeing them primarily as a deterrent," Ulyanov said in an interview with Kommersant published on the newspaper's website.
It is also possible that the North Korean crisis is largely a result of Western policies, he said.
"It seems that many Western countries either do not understand or do not want to understand this. Indeed, just as they don't understand that the difficulties that the international community faces in the case of the DPRK are largely the result of their own policy on Libya before the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, which caused serious damage to efforts to strengthen the global non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," Ulyanov said.
"Of course, I am saying this not to justify Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, but to show the whole complexity of the current situation. To resolve it, the DPRK must agree to denuclearization but in return receive convincing and effective security guarantees," Ulyanov said.