‘Bait and switch’: N Korea says Libya vulnerable due to US n-bargain ‘tactic’

Calling the West’s bargain with Libya an invasion tactic to disarm the country,the official said it amounted to a bait and switch approach. The official was proclaiming that North Korea’s ‘songun’ ideology of a powerful military was “proper in a thousand ways” and the only guarantee of peace on the Korean Peninsula.

“As they have watched the attacks in Libya this week,senior North Korean leaders must feel alarmed,but also deeply satisfied with themselves,” said Rüdiger Frank,an adjunct professor at Korea University and the University of North Korean Studies,writing on the website 38 North.

Frank said that the Libyan situation was at least the third instance in two decades that offer proof that they did something right while others failed and ultimately paid the price. He said North Korea would probably see object lessons in the Soviet Union’s decision to end the arms race and to “abandon the political option to use their weapons of mass destruction”,and in Iraq’s agreement to accept United Nations nuclear inspectors and monitors. And now,Libya.

The United States said there was no link between Libya’s abandonment of efforts to develop nuclear arms and the current military campaign by Western nations. “Where they are at today has absolutely no connection with them renouncing their nuclear program or nuclear weapons,” said Mark Toner,a State Department spokesman.

The comments by the anonymous North Korean official appeared to dim the chances for a renewal of the so-called six-party talks on the dismantling of North Korea’s atomic program. The talks ended in 2009 when North Korea withdrew,over international sanctions following a missile test. The two Koreas,the United States,China,Russia and Japan are the participants in the six-party process,which began in 2003. MARK McDONALD