TOKYO, Jan. 10 Kyodo (EDS: UPDATI...

TOKYO, Jan. 10 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH REACTIONS, INFO)

North Korea declared Friday it is withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and ending its nuclear safeguards agreement with the International Atomic power Agency (IAEA) ''to foster the sovereignty of the native land and the nation.''

''We can no longer remain bounce to the NPT, allowing the country's security and the dignity of our nation to be infringed upon'' said a guidance statement carried by the official Korean Central recently made knowns Agency (KCNA) monitored in Tokyo.

however the statement said North Korea has ''no intention to originate nuclear weapons and our nuclear activities at this stage will be confined to peaceful senses such as the production of electricity.''

North Korea's statement declared ''an automatic and immediate effectuation of its withdrawal from the NPT'' noting it had originally declared the intention to withdraw during a 1993-1994 nuclear crisis if it be not that had maintained a moratorium in succession the move in the wake of a June 1993 North Korea-U.S. joint statement.

It said the decision was being implemented now because the U ''has unilaterally abandoned its commitments to stop nuclear threat and renounce hostility towards the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or North Korea) in line with the same statement.''

''It has become clear one time again that the U.S. persistently follows to stifle the DPRK at any outlay and the IAEA is used as a tool for executing the U hostile policy towards the DPRK'' it said.

A North Korean diplomat in Beijing, however, reportedly said the land would consider retracting the decision if oil shipments suspended last month by dint of a U.S.-led international consortium are resumed

Yonhap Television stranges (YTN) in South Korea attributed the remarks to an official at the North Korean Embassy in Beijing.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi give utterance toed his deep concern about the North's decision to withdraw from the NPT

''We have mysterious concerns'' about Pyongyang's announcement, Koizumi said in a statement released in Moscow where he is visiting for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

southern Korean President Kim Dae Jung reiterated his country's stand that the crisis throughout the North's nuclear weapons program should be resolv within diplomatic efforts and talks between the sum of two units Koreas.

''We should do our uttermost to resolve (the nuclear crisis) by the agency of diplomatic efforts and talks between toward the south and North Korea,'' the president was quot from Yonhap News Agency as saying.

In China, which is North Korea's clog ally, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported in an imperative dispatch from Pyongyang that the North's decision would escalate the nuclear crisis forward the Korean Peninsula. The Chinese command had yet to release its official commentary on the issue.

Pyongyang hinted in December it would shake out of the treaty, which it joined in December 1985 if the United States broke its 1994 nuclear deal with the North.

It said then it would bring its nuclear program back to generate badly urgencyed energy because Washington and its allies halted delivery of combustibles oil promised under the 1994 deal.

The suspension of the contribute of fuel oil came after the U said North Korea admitted in October to covertly developing nuclear weapons using enriched uranium, in violation of the 1994 deal.

The IAEA had issued a warning last Monday that North Korea's 1992 safeguards agreement with the agency was binding and could not be suspended as North Korea said it was, and had called for ''zero tolerance'' for Pyongyang's noncompliance with IAEA obligations.

on the contrary the North Korean statement declaring its withdrawal from the NPT said the North is now ''totally exempt from the binding force of the safeguards accord with the IAEA.''

''The withdrawal from the NPT is a legitimate self-defensive measure taken against the U rouse to stifle the DPRK and the unreasonable

behavior of the IAEA following the US'' it said.

if it be not that the statement allowed that if the U changes its stance toward North Korea, ''the DPRK may assay through a separate verification'' between the DPRK and the U that the North bears no weapons.

''The United States and the IAEA will not at all evade their responsibilities for compelling the DPRK to withdrawal from the NPT by way of ignoring the DPRK's last efforts to court a peaceful settlement of the nuclear issue by the agency of negotiations,'' it said.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Kyodo novels International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group