PRESS RELEASE
North Korea’s UN Ambassador Warns Nuclear War Imminent
Oct. 17, 2017 (EIRNS)—North Korea’s Deputy United Nations Ambassador warned the UN General Assembly yesterday that the crisis on the Korean Peninsula "has reached the touch-and-go point and a nuclear war may break out at any moment," RT reported today.
Deputy Ambassador Kim In-rong said North Korea is the only country in the world subjected to "such an extreme and direct nuclear threat" by the United States, Associated Press reported. He accused the United States of hatching a "secret operation aimed at the removal of our supreme leadership," and said North Korea’s nuclear arsenal was only for self-defense.
Speaking in the UN General Assembly’s Disarmament Committee, he insisted that nuclear weapons are North Korea’s "precious strategic asset that cannot be reversed or altered for anything," a statement which other North Korean officials have previously delivered almost word-for-word, RT says.
The North Korean Deputy Ambassador warned,
"The entire U.S. mainland is within our firing range, and if the U.S. dares to invade our sacred territory—even an inch—it will not escape our severe punishment in any part of the globe.... Unless the hostile policy and the nuclear threat of the United States is throughly eradicated, we will never put our nuclear weapons and ballistic rockets on the negotiating table under any circumstances."
Jonathan Marshall, a frequent contributor to ConsortiumNews on war and nuclear weapons, debunks the notion that the ground-based interceptor missiles touted by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) have the capability to intercept incoming nuclear missiles. Marshall quotes arms expert Joseph Cirincione, who quipped, "We have as much chance of intercepting a North Korean missile as the President does of scoring a hole in one." The Government Accountability Office (GAO) last year reported that the Missile Defense Agency’s optimistic performance claims for ground-based missile dfense "have not been demonstrated."
President Trump’s faith in his missile defense system is misplaced and dangerous, says Marshall. In addition, he points out that Kim Jung Un recently "described his small nuclear arsenal not as an offensive force," but as a "powerful deterrent firmly safeguarding the peace and security in the Korean Peninsula" against "protracted nuclear threats" from the United States. U.S. experts "believe Kim means what he says about acquiring nuclear weapons for deterrence, not for war," Marshall says, and quotes the CIA top Korean analyst’s recent public statement, "He [Kim Jong Un] wants to rule for a long time and die peacefully in his own bed."
