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“The idea that only North Korea’s nuclear weapons are in flagrant violation of international law is not just bad faith, it’s blatantly lawless itself. The United States, along with the other nuclear-armed states, is obligated under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to eliminate its nuclear weapons. The International Court of Justice was clear in its 1996 advisory opinion that “good faith” meant that the NPT states parties had to successfully conclude multilateral negotiations on nuclear disarmament. …The idea that the nuclear-armed states can have their nukes and eat their non-proliferation too is a reckless fantasy. If the United States, United Kingdom, and France want to prevent proliferation, why on earth would they try to deter states from negotiating or joining an international agreement to never acquire them or use them?” Ray Acheson, Editor, First Committee Monitor, Director, Reaching Critical Will, Member, Steering Committee of ICAN, Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reportedly warned Sweden of severe consequences if the country followed through on signing a UN treaty banning nuclear weapons.

The Korean War Started in June 1949? 

“US and South Korea accused of war atrocities. Inquiry uncovers secret of series of attacks by South on North. South Korean troops attacked the North a year before the Korean war broke out, researchers have claimed in the latest disturbing revelation about the conflict which almost led to global war. More than 250 guerrillas from the South are said to have launched an attack on North Korean villages along the east coast in June 1949. .. The incident has been confirmed by a South Korean army official.  (John Gittings, Martin Kettle, The Guardian, 17 January 2000)

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The DPRK and the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty (NBT)

On October 16, H.E. Mr. Kim In Ryong (image left, source Zimbio), Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea stated at the First Committee:

“In July, under the initiative and leading role of the non-nuclear-weapon states, the UN adopted the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty (NBT) that legally stipulates the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Nuclear-weapon-states including the U.S. and members of the military alliances like NATO took negative stand towards the treaty from the beginning and didn’t even attend the UN meeting dealing with the NBT. The DPRK consistently supports the total elimination of nuclear weapons and the efforts for denuclearization of the entire world. However, as long as the U.S. which constantly threatens and blackmails the DPRK with nuclear weapons rejects the NBT, the DPRK is not in position to accede to the treaty. It is well known to the whole world that the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula was created by the U.S.’s hostile policy and nuclear threat against the DPRK. For success of nuclear disarmament efforts, the countries that possess largest nuclear arsenals should take the lead in dismantling nuclear weapons, roll back nuclear doctrines of aggressive nature, such as ‘preemptive strike’ and withdraw nuclear weapons deployed outside their own territories.”

DPRK Ambassador Kim In Ryong continued:

‘In 1957 the U.S. deployed nuclear weapons to south Korea and since the 1970’s it has been carrying out large scale military exercises every year involving the nuclear assets. In this March and April, the U.S. staged the largest-scale joint military exercise, aimed at mounting a preemptive nuclear strike against the DPRK, with participation of over 300,000 troops and all sorts of strategic assets including aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines….What is more dangerous is that the U.S. dared to formulate a plan and stage the exercise of decapitation operation and secret operation aimed at the removal of our supreme leadership. No country in the world has been subjected to such an extreme and direct nuclear threat from the U.S. for such a long time and experienced a nuclear war exercise in front of its own gate which is essentially most vicious and brutal in its scale, form and purpose….The possession of nuclear weapons and inter-continental ballistic rockets is the righteous self-defensive measure of the DPRK against the evident and practical nuclear threat of the U.S.”

Washington’s Plan to Isolate the DPRK

From the United Nations Security Council to the First Committee on ” Disarmament,” the hypocrisy of the opportunistic “deals” distorting the truth, and condemning the DPRK is so odious that it is virtually intolerable.

On October 14, 2017 on an inner page, The New York Times announced:

“North Korea Rails as U.S. Plans Drills with Seoul. As the United States and South Korea prepare for next week’s joint naval exercise, North Korean officials on Friday renewed their threat to launch ballistic missiles near Guam, an American territory in the Western Pacific.”

For decades North Korea has appealed to the UN Security Council on an Emergency Basis to consider the menace to which they are chronically subjected by these military drills conducted by the US, which murdered more than 3,000,000 Koreans during 1950-1953. And for decades North Korea’s desperate plea has been ignored by a US dominated Security Council, while that same irresponsible Security Council – or more accurately stated, while that same US controlled Security Council inflicts criminal sanctions upon the people of North Korea.

Curiously, on October 15, the following day, the New York Times published ”On Display in Chile: The Making of a Dictator…..

“There is a cable from the Central Intelligence Agency to its officers in Santiago after a failed operation in October 1970 to prevent Allende from assuming office, which he did that November. The CIA provided weapons for the plan, which resulted in the killing of the commander in chief of the army, General Rene Schneider, and the agency later sent money to help some of the plotters flee the country. ‘The station has done an excellent job of guiding Chileans to a point where a military solution is at least an option for them.’…. ‘To see on a piece of paper, for example, the president of the United States ordering the C.I.A. to preemptively overthrow a democratically elected president of Chile is stunning.,’ Mr. Kornbluh (curator of the exhibit) said.”

It is outrageous that the US, which colluded in Chile’s murder of US citizens Charles Horman, Frank Teruggi and the roasting to death of Rodrigo Rojas, is now shedding crocodile tears over Otto Warmbier, who was returned alive to the United States, following what was most probably a tragic accident, during his detention in North Korea, and six days after his return, alive, to the US, the plug was pulled, leading to his death.

An ”atmosphere” was created, to “legitimize” the murderous overthrow of the popular Chilean leader, the Socialist Salvador Allende, just as an ‘”atmosphere”” is being created to economically strangle, intolerably provoke, and ultimately annihilate the popular socialist government and people of North Korea. It is now impossible to avoid seeing the parallel, as the barbaric plan to isolate the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is put into effect, after US Vice-President Pence pressured countries to cut all ties with North Korea, and Mexico and Peru comply with a cowardice which would have disgusted the great Mexican artists, Siqueiros, Orozco and Diego Rivera. According the The Wall Street Journal, U.S. “diplomats have been approaching nations as big as Germany and as small as Fiji to shut down North Korea’s foreign links.” In May, Germany obsequiously closed down a North Korean hostel in Berlin. The United Arab Emirates, hardly a model of democracy, very recently cut diplomatic ties with the DPRK.

The Threat of Nuclear War is “Good for Business”

On October 14, 2017, CNBC headline stated: “Defense Stocks Soar on the Spectre of War with North Korea….The S&P 500 Aerospace and Defense Industry sub-sector index is up 30 percent, compared to 12.9 for the S&P 500.” Does this not give credence to Kim Jung-un’s statement that:

”The US is the war merchant and strangler of peace…It is working hard to fatten its munitions monopolies and create the imbalance of force and the military confrontation in certain regions through arms sales and lead them to physical conflict. And then, it attempts to send its armed forces under the veil of ‘peace defender’ and occupy them. Trump called for the total destruction of our state and people at the UN arena and continues to bring nuclear strategic assets into South Korea and its vicinity, pushing the situation on the peninsula to the brink of war.”

On October 16, President Trump sent the USS Theodore Roosevelt, a nuclear aircraft carrier to the Korean Peninsula. The USS Ronald Reagan is already in the area, and the nuclear powered submarine Michigan, packed with 150 Tomahawk cruise missiles is at Busan. According to Alex Lockie of Business Insider,

“In April, when the Michigan last visited Busan, south Korean media reported that it carried SEALs to train South Korean forces for a ‘decapitation’ mission, in which the US and South Korea would work together to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and take out North Korea’s nuclear command structure.”

According to CNN,

“Japan and South Korea are participants in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, the most expensive weapons system in world history.”

These are not routine defensive exercises, these are deadly provocations terrorizing North Korea, and indicate the U.S. is “begging for war,” today, as it did in 1949. Confronted with this devastating military menace, North Korea, reacting in self-defense, will likely test another missile; this may, at this point, be used as an excuse for the military attack that psychotic sectors of the US government crave. War is the most profitable of all enterprises – for the merchants of death.

United Nations’ Double Standards

At the United Nations First Committee, it is tedious and repugnant to hear so many intellectually bankrupt UN member states denouncing the DPRK; these are countries so cowardly that they dare not identify the nations which hold the greatest arsenals of nuclear weapons, violate the nuclear NPT with impunity, and hold the entire world hostage with their vast and overwhelming nuclear force. Perhaps most duplicitous are denunciations by the UK, the Netherlands, Turkey, France, Israel, the U.S. etc., ad nauseam, all of whom currently host arsenals of nuclear weapons on their territory, in flagrant violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The double standards at the United Nations have reached shameful proportions, and the steel trap of media propaganda has gripped many Europeans, from whom one would have expected, at least, skepticism. The indoctrination of Europeans would be incomprehensible, if one forgets that almost every country of Western Europe has rivers of blood in their colonial history. And, then, perhaps they are suffering from cognitive dissonance, subliminally aware of the truth of the DPRK’s statements, but fearful of the consequences should they consciously admit this truth. The distinguished linguist, Noam Chomsky, calls the Western Europeans “the colonies” of the US, although it is not clear who leads whom – the US or the UK.

It is the quintessence of irony that North Korea defends the new Nobel Prize winning Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, while the United States, the United Kingdom and France held a press conference denouncing the Treaty, stating:

“France, the United Kingdom and the United States have not taken part in the negotiation of the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. We so not intend to sign, ratify or ever become party to it.”

Jimmy Carter’s Peace Initiative

On October 6, former President Jimmy Carter published a reasonable and respectful article in The Washington Post, stating:

“What the officials have always demanded is direct talks with the United States, leading to a permanent peace treaty to replace the still-prevailing 1953 cease-fire that has failed to end the Korean conflict. They want an end to sanctions, a guarantee that there will be no military attack on a peaceful North Korea, and eventual normal relations between their country and the international community. They almost unanimously believe that their greatest threat is from a preemptory military attack by the United States…there is no remaining chance that it will agree to a total denuclearization, as it has seen what happened in a denuclearized Libya and assessed the doubtful status of U.S. adherence to the Iran nuclear agreement….the next step should be for the United States to offer to send a high-level delegation to Pyongyang for peace talks or to support an international conference including North and South Korea, the United States and China, at a mutually acceptable site.”

Jimmy Carter has reportedly said he is willing to travel to North Korea to meet with President Kim Jong-un in an effort to defuse tensions, and bring ‘permanent peace’ to the Korean peninsula. Carter’s previous efforts resolving crises between North Korea and the U.S. in 1994 had been successful. In view of his willingness to contribute to resolution of the current crisis, it is imperative that his offer to intercede be accepted, and promptly. It is perhaps the only realistic hope.

Carla Stea is Global Research’s Correspondent at the United Nations headquarters, New York, NY