FM Spokesman Assails U.S. for Instigating UN Secretary General to Send Letter to UNSC President

  Pyongyang, June 23 (KCNA) -- A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of the DPRK gave the following answer to a question raised by KCNA Thursday in connection with the fact that the U.S. let the UN secretary general forward a letter denying the DPRK's right to launch satellite to the president of the UN Security Council:
    The DPRK officially registered earth observation satellite Kwangmyongsong-4 at UN after going through legitimate procedures under "The Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space".
    This is the world's acknowledgment of Kwangmyongsong-4 as a treasure conducive to prosperity common to humankind.
    But the UN secretary general on June 15 sent an incoherent letter to the president of the UN Security Council in which he said that the registration of Kwangmyongsong-4 was just a technical procedure pursuant to the convention and that he conveyed to the UNSC the understanding that he does not consider the launch as a thing legal and valid even though he registered the projectile the DPRK launched into space on Feb. 7, 2016 and informed the UN member nations of the launch in line with the above-said convention. This was something abnormal.
    It was none other than the U.S. which invented and orchestrated such absurd farce that contradicts the function of the UN secretary general and lacked impartiality and independence of the UN activities.
    It is the main purpose sought by the U.S. to strangle a sovereign state at any cost even by cooking up UN Security Council "resolution on sanctions" and by employing all illegal and brigandish means and methods while finding fault with the right to self-defense and legitimate rights of the sovereign state recognized by international law.
    Recently the U.S. introduced all kinds of strategic assets to the Korean peninsula and areas around it, pushing the instable situation on the peninsula to an extreme phase and is getting all the more frantic in its racket for ratcheting up sanctions and pressure on the DPRK.
    The situation clearly proves once again the justice of the line of simultaneously pushing forward economic construction and the building of nuclear force.
    We are ready for both dialogue and physical measures and have in place everything necessary.
    The U.S. has to face up to the strategic position of the DPRK and the trend of the times and make a bold decision to roll back its anachronistic and hostile policy toward the DPRK.
    As long as the U.S. persists in its hostile policy toward the DPRK, the latter will further bolster its nuclear deterrence for self-defence in quality and quantity and will continue to exercise its legitimate right to develop space for peaceful purposes no matter what others may say. -0