Parte 2 - LA36 KB articles 1988 98 and cuttings 105 002

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• "It is an old method of the United States to satisfy its demands one by one, that is to demand the opening of one military base today and another tomorrow." Between March 13 and 19, three leading British daily newspapers, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Independent, published editorial comments supporting military attacks on People's Korea. This is the serious context in which friends of Korea in our country have sought to explain the real situation in Korea, the actual source of the nuclear threat in the region, and to build a united and effective movement that can defend Korea's independence and its unique socialist system centred on the popular masses. We further aim to build friendship with the Korean people and to press the British government to break with its ignoble past and its present reactionary policies and, instead, establish full diplomatic relations with the DPRK and encourage commercial, cultural and other people-to-people exchanges on the principles of independence, equality, non-interference in internal affairs and mutual benefit. Rather than backing and encouraging the United States in its plots to isolate and stifle Korean independence and Korean socialism, the British government should apologise to the Korean people for its history of hostility and aggression not least for its disgraceful and murderous participation in the war of 1950-53 for which due reaparation should be made. It is the height of hypocrisy for Britain to wax hysterical over the non-existent nuclear threat from the DPRK when it has exported huge amounts of plutonium to Japan on several occasions and when it is planning to do the same with south Korea and even to open an office of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd in Seoul. Britain is in no position to lecture any other country on the nuclear issue. Its own nuclear tests have been conducted without regard to the health and lives of Native Americans and Australian Aborigines; nor, indeed, for those of its own service personnel. In 1982 its ships carried nuclear weapons during the aggressive war against Argentina, in defiance of its NPT obligations as a nuclear state not to threaten a non-nuclear country in this fashion. The Sellafield nuclear plant in north-east England has brought record levels of cancer and leukemia to the people living on the other side of the Irish Sea. The protests and concern of the Irish government and of all the political parties in Ireland remain unheeded. There is yet another aspect of hypocrisy that needs to be addressed. Whilst the nuclear issue is used to pressure and bully Third World countries such as Korea, Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Pakistan and India, neither the IAEA nor the UN Security Council have ever taken a single measure against Israel on account of its nuclear arsenal. In the case of South Africa, the IAEA conducted 115 rounds of inspections and never pressed for a special inspection, which they demanded after just six inspections in Korea. Yet the whole world knew that the South African racist regime had developed nuclear weapons, just as it knows of the nuclear threat posed by the zionist regime in the Middle East and beyond. Surely, it is the height of cynicism for de Klerk to claim the destruction of the country's nuclear arsenal only as the birth of a non-racial democracy and a government led by the African National Congress draws near. The Korean nuclear issue has been created by the United States, supported by its allied imperialist powers and various supplicant and client regimes, because it wants to destroy Korean independence and socialism. If it were not the nuclear issue it would be something else. Under the wise leadership of the Workers' Party of Korea, its great leader President Kim Il Sung and esteemed Secretary Kim Jong II, the Korean people have built a flourishing new society on the ruins of war and the legacy of enforced colonial backwardness. Independent in politics, self- sustaining in economy and self-reliant in defence, Korea displays the superiority of socialism, a system that the Korean people chose for themselves and which they have defended with their blood and lives, no matter which way the wind blows and no matter what sanctions, pressures and threats it might face. The Korean people have selflessly extended the hand of solidarity and practical assistance to others struggling for independence, freedom, development and socialism. Particularly since the adoption of the Pyongyang Declaration a little over a year ago, the Korean people, led by their Party, have stood in the forefront of a mighty international

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