'No intention' to develop nuclear weapons, says North Korea

North Korea’s number two leader assured a summit today that his government currently had no intention of developing nuclear weapons, amid anger over its launch of a missile near Japan.

Kim Yong Nam said Pyongyang had “no intentions to develop nuclear weapons and its nuclear activities at this stage would be confined only to the peaceful purposes”, despite its withdrawal from a global nuclear arms control treaty in January.

In his speech to the summit of 116-nation Non-Aligned Movement in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, North Korea’s ceremonial head of state said his country left the treaty because its nation’s interests were “threatened by reckless US policy”.

Hours before Kim’s speech, the South Korean Defence Ministry said North Korea had launched an anti-ship missile into the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.

“It’s not a positive development. This is a situation all the NAM countries will lament,” Chilean diplomat Claudio Rojas said at the summit.

A North Korean diplomat said he had not heard about the missile launch, but played down the significance.

“Big incident? What big incident? Everybody has missiles. Is there a country that doesn’t have them?” said the official.

The missile launch coincided with a visit to Seoul by US Secretary of State Colin Powell to discuss Pyongyang’s suspected nuclear weapons programme, and came on the eve of the inauguration of South Korea’s new president, Roh Moo-hyun.

North Korea has said since it withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty last month that its nuclear programme would generate electricity, not weapons. But Pyongyang typically says this is its policy “at this stage”, leaving open a change of course.

Pyongyang has never admitted nor denied US claims of having one or two nuclear bombs, but says it has the right to develop atomic weapons.

Summit delegates have wrangled for days over North Korea’s nuclear crisis, with many members pushing for a summit statement urging Pyongyang to return to the nuclear pact. But the North Koreans rejected text after text, successfully blocking such wording, according to a copy a delegate showed The Associated Press.

The final draft to be adopted by national leaders later today merely “noted” North Korea’s withdrawal from the pact, and calls for peaceful resolution to the standoff over Pyongyang’s suspected nuclear weapons development.