After the United States (U.S.) imposed new sanctions, North Korea has indirectly threatened to start testing nuclear bombs and intercontinental missiles again.
North Korean state media, KCNA, reported Thursday that the country’s Workers’ Party Politburo had held a meeting and ordered a reconsideration of confidence-building measures taken by Pyongyang as well as considering resuming all temporarily suspended activities.
Experts see this as an allusion to North Korea’s own 2018 test ban on long-range missiles and nuclear weapons.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un led the party meeting held Wednesday, which saw officials reportedly discuss how to target measures against the U.S. in future.
The U.S. government was accused of reaching a “danger line.”
The task of national defence should therefore be to strengthen the “physical means which can efficiently control the hostile moves of the US,” KCNA reported.
There have long been fears abroad that Pyongyang could resume its nuclear tests.
Kim already declared in late 2019, as progress stalled in U.S. negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear programme, that Pyongyang no longer considered itself bound in principle by its testing moratorium.
The U.S. Treasury recently adopted new sanctions against North Korea, which included adding five North Koreans to the sanctions list.
They were accused of procuring goods for their country’s missile and weapons of mass destruction programmes.
The U.S. move came in response to six short-range ballistic missile tests conducted by North Korea last September.
Such testing by North Korea was banned by UN resolutions.
Ballistic missiles were typically surface-to-surface missiles and depending on their design, could carry conventional, biological, chemical or even nuclear warheads to the target.
dpa
