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-1- Friends and Comrades: Allow me first of all to express my thanks and appreciation to the Korea Friendship Committee for organising this meeting on "People's Korea and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty", and also for inviting me to speak. As many of you will know, on April 1 a meeting of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA), held in the Austrian capital, Vienna, adopted a "resolution" to refer the question of the nuclear inspections in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the United Nations Security Council. This resolution was passed despite due to the insistence, pressure and bullying of the United States, and despite supported by a number of other countries including both South Korea and Britain, and despite the opposition of a number of the Board's 35 members, such as China, Libya Syria, India and Pakistan. On April 6, a statement from the Foreign Ministry of People's Korea responded to the IAEA resolution, rejecting it and putting

-2- it into its political context. The Statement said: " The United States and other forces hostile to us which have been threatening the DPRK and putting pressure on it over the issue of "nuclear inspection" are now trying to openly interfere in its internal affairs and take away even 'sanctions' against it with the help of the United Nations. " This is an open and hostile act of the United States and its supporters to isolate and stifle our Republic. " The 'two sites' in the inspection of which was demanded by the IAEA Secretariat are our military sites which have no relevance to nuclear activities and, accordingly, these are not subject to inspection under the Safeguards Agreement. " What is more, the secretariat published the 'satellite data intelligence information' provided by the United States and, on this basis, demanded an inspection of our military facilities, claiming that they were

-3- nuclear related facilities. " The fact that they spied on our country by an espionage satellite or by high altitude reconnaissance plane was a violation of its sovereignty and it is still more shameless for them to try to reconfirm the "intelligence information" through the IAEA. " some officials at the IAEA Secretariat and some member nations have brought our issue to the United Nations, ignoring our reasonable proposal and patient efforts to seek a negotiated settlement of the problem. "Ever since it signed the Safeguards Agreement our Republic has not only faithfully fulfilled its commitments under it but provided every possible convenience and cooperation to the IAEA Secretariat and inspectors in their full performance of their duties. "Even after the declaration of our withdrawal from the Treaty we made it clear that we were ready to fulfil our commitments under the Agreement and especially before the

-4- last meeting we proposed to hold negotiation with the IAEA on the implementation of our obligations and have exerted efforts for its realisation. "TO our regret, our offer for negotiations was turned down. " This was very abnormal and something unprecedented. " of course, because of the immense and hideous destructive power of nuclear weapons - and, indeed, the horrendous consequences that accidents involving ever nuclear energy generated for peaceful purposes can entail - questions of nuclear proliferation and nuclear safety rightly elicit the concern of the broadest sections of people around the world. The mass media in Britain and other western countries are therefore seeking to confuse people, including people in the peace and labour movements, by pretending that the danger of war in north-east Asia and the Pacific comes from north Korea and by suggesting that north Korea is behaving

-5- and irresponsible in a reckless fashion. These assertions cannot be bagh substantiated if we look at the facts a the history surrounding the present crisis: December 12 1985- The DPRK joined the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty. June 23 1986 - The DPRK Foreign ministry proposed to turn the Korean peninsula into a Nuclear-Free Zone. This was not the first such proposal. As far back as 1980 it was proposed in a Joint Declaration between the workers' Party of Korea and the Socialist Party of Japan, which is that Country's a largest opposition party and the Lsister party of the British Labour Party. November 6 1990 - The DPRK foreign ministry announced that the government agreed in principle on signing a nuclear Safeguards agreement with LIAEA and pointed out that the solution of the problem depends on DPRK- USA relations. October 23 1991 - North Korea proposed a declaration of the denuclearisation of

-6- the Korean peninsula at the fourth north-south high level talks. November 25 - The DPRK Foreign Ministry announced that Pyongyang would sign a nuclear safeguards agreement when the US began to withdraw its nuclear weapons from south Korea. December 31 - North and South Korea signed the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula. January 7 1992 - The DPRK Foreign Ministry announced that the government would sign a nuclear safeguards agreement and accept nuclear inspection. January 30 - The DPRK signed a nuclear safeguards agreement with the IAEA. March 17 - The North-South Joint Nuclear Control committee was formed. April 9 - The DPRK ratified a nuclear safeguards agreement with the IAEA. may 11 - A delegation of the IAEA led by its Director General Hans Blix visited

Pyongyang. -7- May 25 - The first IAEA ad hoc Nuclear inspection team visited Pyongyang. June 12 - The DPRK Ministry of Atomic Energy Industry announced that the government allowed the IAEA ad hoc inspection team to visit all the facilities which were subject to inspection. July 7 - The second IAEA ad hoc nuclear inspection team visited Pyongyang. August 31 - The third IAEA ad hoc Nuclear inspection team visited Pyongyang. November 2 - The fourth IAEA ad hoc Nuclear inspection team visited Pyongyang. December 14 - The fifth IAEA ad hoc Nuclear inspection team visited Pyongyang. January 26 1993 - The sixth IAEA ad hoc nuclear inspection team visited Pyongyang February 21 - The DPRK Ministry of Atomic Energy Industry published a detailed report on the IAEA inspections. the DPRK.

-8- March 8 - Marshal kim song Il, Supreme commander of the Korean People's Army, ordered a national state of war preparedness to cope with Team Spirit 93, a nuclear war rehearsal Conducted right up to the borders of the DPRK and involving hundreds of thousands of US and south Korean military personnel. March 12 - Pyongyang decides to withdraw from the NPT as a measure to defend its supreme national interests, something Clearly I allowed for in terms of the treaty itself. What clearly emerges from this overview is that, as a non-nuclear state, the DPRK joined the NPT and signed a Safeguards Agreement in an attempt to defend its independence and security, not so as to give them up. The DPRK cooperated with all reasonable requests of the IAEA, even though, despite the signing of the north-south agreement on the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, there has been no

-9- inspection of any kind carried out on the US bases and other military installations in South Korea. What the DPRK absolutely coul not accept was that the IAEA should be misused so that CIA satellite spy photographs should be employed to force it to open its non-nuclear military bases, vital to the security of the country, to inspection by outsiders, including citizens of the USA, whic remains an enemy country of the DPRK. As a March 12 Statement of the Korean government noted: "If we submissively accept an unjust inspection by the IAEA, it would legitimise the espionage acts by the United States, a belligerent party vis a vis the DPRK, and set the beginning of the full exposure of our military installations. Under our specific conditions, in which the country still remains divided and exposed to the constant nuclear threats from the United States, it will be totally inconceivable

-10- to lay our military sites open to the enemies." Clearly learning the lessons of Iraq, the statement continued: "It is an old method of the United States to satisfy its demands one by one, the is to demand the opening of one military site today and another tomorrow." The Koreans are absolutely right to see the present crisis as one affecting the supreme interests, and indeed the survival, of their country, nation and people. Last month, three leading British daily newspapers rushed into print with editorials backing possible military aggression against Korea. "If economic sanctions do not work, military strikes will have to be considered." (The Times March 13 1993) "It may be that in the long run, Kim Il Sung and others like him will be deterred only by the kind of action that the Israelis took in 1981 when they bombed