frightening

From AOL News :

North Korea Discloses It Has Nuclear Weapons
Communist State Rejects Disarmament Talks

SEOUL, South Korea (Feb. 10) - North Korea announced for the first time Thursday it has nuclear weapons, and it rejected moves to restart disarmament talks anytime soon, saying the bombs are protection against an increasingly hostile United States.

The communist state's statement dramatically raised the stakes in the 2-year-old nuclear confrontation and posed a grave challenge to President Bush, who started his second term with a vow to end North Korea's nuclear program through six-nation talks.

''We ... have manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration's evermore undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the (North),'' the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency. The news agency used the colloquial term ''nukes'' in its English-language account.
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Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the North had no reason to believe the United States would attack.

''The North Koreans have been told by the president of the United States that the United States has no intention of attacking or invading North Korea,'' Rice said in Luxembourg. ''There is a path for the North Koreans that would put them in a more reasonable relationship with the rest of the world.''
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North Korea said Thursday its ''nuclear weapons will remain (a) nuclear deterrent for self-defense under any circumstances.''

It said Washington's alleged attempt to topple the North's regime ''compels us to take a measure to bolster its nuclear weapons arsenal in order to protect the ideology, system, freedom and democracy chosen by its people.''

Since 2003, the United States, the two Koreas, China, Japan and Russia have held three rounds of talks in Beijing aimed at persuading the North to abandon nuclear weapons development in return for economic and diplomatic rewards. No significant progress has been made.

A fourth round scheduled for September 2004 was canceled when North Korea refused to attend, citing what it called a ''hostile'' U.S. policy.
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In recent weeks, hopes had risen that North Korea might return to the six-nation talks, especially after Bush refrained from any direct criticism of North Korea when he started his second term last month. During his first term, Bush said North Korea was part of an ''axis of evil'' with Iran and prewar Iraq.

On Thursday, North Korea said it decided not to rejoin such talks anytime soon after studying Bush's inaugural and State of the Union speeches and after Rice labeled North Korea one of the ''outposts of tyranny.''

''We have wanted the six-party talks but we are compelled to suspend our participation in the talks for an indefinite period till we have recognized that there is justification for us to attend the talks and there are ample conditions and atmosphere to expect positive results from the talks,'' the North Korean Foreign Ministry said.

Still, North Korea said it retained its ''principled stand to solve the issue through dialogue and negotiations and its ultimate goal to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula remain unchanged.''

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So, bush's actions and policies have directly caused N. Korea to create nuclear weapons, because they are afraid that he will attack them. Not an unfounded fear, considering that he has targeted them directly in speeches numerous times. The recent speeches that he and Rice have given have increased that fear, understandably. Rice's assurance that bush does not want to attack probably does not do much to deflect those fears. It's not like this administration is actually honest or does what it says!
Logically, the N. Koreans would not use these weapons unless provoked, so let's hope that bush won't do anything ridiculously stupid this time.
Just as an aside, I've always found it interesting that the US believes that it can decide who is and who is not "allowed" to have nuclear weapons. If we can have them, why can't other countries? Who are we to decide who is trustworthy and who is not? It's not like anyone trusts us!