North Korea on Tuesday dismissed recent reports suggesting it has a nuclear link to Syria, calling them "sheer misinformation" and reaffirming its pledge to follow through with a regional agreement to stop its nuclear activities.
"This is sheer misinformation," said the North's official Central News Agency, quoting an unnamed Foreign Ministry spokesperson, in its English-language dispatch.
"The DPRK solemnly declared in October 2006 that, being a responsible nuclear weapons state, it would never allow nuclear transfer, and has stood by its words," the spokesperson was quoted as saying, recalling the time Pyongyang tested its first nuclear device last year. The DPRK is the acronym for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The North Korean claim counters a series of news reports quoting a senior United States official that Israel may have obtained some evidence or intelligence pointing to North Korea's assistance in building a nuclear program in Syria.
Andrew Semmel, acting deputy assistant secretary of state for nuclear nonproliferation, told a conference last week in Rome that Syria has "secret suppliers" of nuclear equipment and that there were North Koreans in the country, raising alarm over a possible nuclear link between the two states.
But a senior North Korean diplomat to the United Nations in New York on Sunday dismissed the suspicions as untrue.
"They often say things that are groundless," Kim Myong-gil, deputy chief of the North Korean mission to the United Nations, told Yonhap News Agency by phone on Sunday.
The latest suspicions about Pyongyang's possible nuclear proliferation comes amid recent progress in the six-nation talks aimed at denuclearizing the communist North.
North Korea in July shut down its key nuclear facilities under an agreement that was reached earlier this year with South Korea, the U.S., Japan, China and Russia. A multinational team of experts recently completed surveying the North's nuclear facilities for planned disablement.
Pointing at The New York Times and other unidentified media outlets as those spreading the suspicions, the North's report on Tuesday argued that Pyongyang had no intention of reneging on its six-nation agreement to distance itself from nuclear activities.
"The DPRK never makes an empty talk but always tells truth," the Foreign Ministry spokesperson was quoted as saying, adding the suspicions were generated by "dishonest forces who do not like to see any progress at the six-party talks and in the DPRK-U.S. relations."
Backing the North's claim, South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon said Monday that evidence has yet to surface to prove a nuclear link between North Korea and Syria.
"If Syria received nuclear materials from North Korea, it must have a facility to store the nuclear material, but as far as I know, Syria does not have any nuclear (storage) facility," Song told reporters.
Song's remarks came shortly after U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said such an activity would be "a matter of great concern."
Gates refused to confirm the reports of a possible nuclear deal between North Korea and Syria, but said the U.S. is "very carefully" watching the two countries.
"The president (George W. Bush) has put down a very strong marker with the North Koreans about further proliferation efforts," Gates told Fox News Sunday.
This week, Pyongyang decided to temporarily boycott a new round of the six-nation talks on ending its nuclear ambitions, previously set to start Wednesday. The Chinese hosts of the talks subsequently postponed the new round of nuclear negotiations.
(Yonhap)