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US uses G7 as ‘tool’ to maintain hegemony: DPRK FM

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
22 Apr 2023 13:07
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The Foreign Minister says the DPRK's status as a nuclear power is "final and irreversible."

The DPRK's Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui pictured with reporters in Beijing on June 23, 2016 (Kyodo)

The DPRK's status as a nuclear power is "final and irreversible," Pyongyang's Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui underlined on Friday, slamming a G7 call for the country to give up its nukes entirely.

Pyongyang has conducted another record-breaking string of launches this year, including test-firing the country's first solid-fuel ballistic missile this month -- a key technical breakthrough for the DPRK's military.

Seoul, Washington, and the United Nations have criticized the tests, and this week G7 foreign ministers called for the "complete, verifiable, and irreversible abandonment of (the DPRK's) nuclear weapons."

Choe slammed the "extremely interventionist" statement, saying the G7 was "malignantly pulling up" the DPRK's "legitimate exercise of its sovereignty."

"The position of the DPRK as a world-class nuclear power is final and irreversible," the top diplomat stressed in a statement to the official KCNA.

Choe pointed out that the "G7, a closed group of a handful of egoistic countries, does not represent the just international community but serves as a political tool for ensuring the US hegemony."

DPRK leader Kim Jong Un had already declared his country an "irreversible" nuclear power in September last year.

Washington and Seoul have ramped up security cooperation, staging joint military exercises with advanced stealth jets and high-profile US strategic assets.

The DPRK views such exercises as rehearsals for invasion and described them last week as "frantic" drills "simulating an all-out war against" Pyongyang.

Choe indicated that "it is anachronistic to think that the right to and capability for nuclear strike is exclusive to Washington."

"We will never seek any recognition and approval from anyone as we are satisfied with our access to the strength for a tit-for-tat strike against the US nuclear threat," she stressed.