Khurshid rejects N Korea's explanation for muscle-flexing

Concerned over North Korea’s clandestine military ties with Pakistan, India on Monday  rejected the communist country’s explanation that its nuclear posturing was intended to merely protect itself from the US and South Korea.

On a day the US claimed to have won the support of China to seek “verifiable denuclearisation” of North Korea, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid bluntly told his counterpart from Pyongyang Pak Ui Chun that New Delhi would neither budge from its “principled stand” against proliferation, nor buy the excuse the reclusive country cited to justify its nuclear test in February.

The external affairs minister had a rare bilateral meeting with his North Korean counterpart in Bandar Seri Begawan on Monday. Both are currently on a visit to the capital of Brunei Darussalam to attend the meeting of the Asean Regional Forum.

“I told him (the North Korean Foreign Minister) that it was important not to get isolated. If you do not get isolated, you will have friends to help you. But if you get isolated, it becomes difficult for even your friends to help you,” Khurshid told journalists after the bilateral meeting with Pakistan.

“We were very candid in conveying our views, our principled stand against proliferation.”  Khurshid added that New Delhi indeed had concerns over purported military and nuclear ties between North Korea and Pakistan. He said that India would soon take up with North Korea the issue of the latter’s clandestine support to Pakistan’s nuclear weapon programme, when Pyongyang would send its Vice-Foreign Minister to New Delhi for bilateral Foreign Office Consultation.  

The visit in September 1998 of Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, the then minister of state for information and broadcasting, to Pyongyang was India’s last high-level engagement with North Korea, which has been labelled by the international community as a pariah for its controversial nuclear weapon programme. Shankar Dayal Sharma had visited North Korea in April 1992 as Vice-President. Pyongyang defied the United Nations Security Council twice in the recent past, first by launching a long-range missile in December, 2012, and then by conducting a nuclear test in February, 2013.