DPRK Foreign Minister Interviewed by TASS Foreign News Editor

  Pyongyang, March 29 (KCNA) -- DPRK Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong gave the following answers to the questions put by the foreign news editor of TASS Tuesday as regards the DPRK's stand to cope with the situation prevailing on the Korean peninsula:
    The U.S. extremely hostile policy and nuclear threat to the DPRK have been the root cause of escalating tensions on the peninsula and compelling the latter to bolster up its nuclear deterrence.
    The U.S. has posed a nuclear threat to the DPRK since long before the latter's access to nuclear weapons and adopted it as its policy to mount a preemptive nuclear attack and staged ceaseless nuclear war drills to put it into practice.
    It attempted to mount a nuclear attack on the DPRK already in the past Korean war. Since the 1950s, it has threatened and blackmailed the DPRK by shipping huge nuclear weapons into south Korea.
    The Bush administration listed the DPRK as "part of the axis of evil" and target of its preemptive nuclear attack. This policy remains unchanged till now.
    This is clearly evidenced by the fact that the Obama administration excluded the DPRK from the list of the countries for non-use of nuclear weapons in April, 2010 and declared a preemptive attack on the DPRK while staging joint military drills with huge nuclear strike means involved in south Korea.
    The U.S. is now staging nuclear attack drills against the DPRK by amassing all its strategic nuclear strike means in south Korea and in its vicinity. No country in the world has been exposed to such serious and potential nuclear threat as what Pyongyang is now experiencing.
    It is quite natural for the DPRK to counter the U.S. nuclear weapons in kind.
    As the U.S. has worked hard to stifle the DPRK with nuclear weapons, the latter was compelled to have access to nukes to protect the sovereignty and vital right of the nation to cope with it.
    The U.S. is the arch criminal who pushed the DPRK to have access to nuclear weapons. The decades-long U.S. nuclear threat and blackmail have prompted the DPRK to do so.
    The only way to cope with the constant nuclear threat and war provocations of the U.S., the world's only user of nuclear weapons and biggest nuclear weapons state, is to achieve the equilibrium of strength by bolstering up nuclear armed force.
    The DPRK has tremendous military muscle capable of fighting any type of war desired by the U.S.
    It opened to public real miniaturized and light nuclear warheads to be mounted on ballistic rockets and showed the capability of the atmospheric re-entry of inter-continental ballistic rocket.
    The DPRK will further strengthen the state defence capacity with the nuclear force as its pivot to cope with the reckless hostile moves of the U.S. and its undisguised nuclear threat.
    In the future, the development speed of the DPRK's nuclear force will depend on how the U.S. will behave and how its viewpoint on the former will change.
    The U.S. is now busy with madcap largest-ever Key Resolve and Foal Eagle 16 joint military maneuvers targeting the DPRK across south Korea despite its repeated warnings.
    The war rehearsals in which hundreds of thousands of armed forces and various nuclear strategic means are involved are now under way under the simulated conditions involving nuclear preemptive attack on the DPRK and "beheading operation" aiming at a the supreme headquarters and "regime change," in particular.
    The U.S. unhesitatingly declared that the joint military drills were aimed to finally examine the feasibility of a war of aggression against the north, thus completely discarding the deceptive and shameless cloak of "annual and defensive ones" though they have been billed outwardly so far.
    The situation of the Korean peninsula is driven to the brink of war as the U.S. is making a preemptive attack an established fact while staging actual maneuvers under the simulated conditions of all kinds of surprise attack against the DPRK.
    It has become quite obvious that the DPRK can never remain a passive onlooker to the imminent U.S. threat of aggression.
    The DPRK has shifted all the military counteraction modes to preemptive attack ones to cope with the U.S. nuclear war hysteria and declared the will to mount a decisive preemptive nuclear attack.
    In a word, the Korean peninsula is standing at the crossroads of a thermonuclear war and peace.
    The extremely tense situation prevailing on the Korean peninsula is something unprecedented and the whole world including your country is closely watching it with great concern and uneasiness.
    In order to prevent the vicious cycle of ever-escalating tension on the peninsula, defuse the danger of war and ensure peace and security, one should not just watch phenomena in sight but properly judge their root cause and take measures for rooting out them, to begin with.
    All the countries desirous of peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and in the region should watch with vigilance the moves of the U.S. regarding the DPRK as its primary target of attack after shifting the strategic pivot for world domination to the Asia-Pacific region and make due efforts to prevent them. -0-