North Korea maintained its anti-U.S. rhetoric yesterday as its parliament supported Pyongyang’s effort to establish a nuclear deterrent (see GSN, Sept. 2).

The Korean Central News Agency, Pyongyang’s state-run media outlet, yesterday accused Western “unsavory elements and media” for spreading “weird misinformation” about last week’s talks on the Korean nuclear crisis and said that North Korean negotiators had offered to abandon their nuclear weapons program “in exchange for the U.S. renunciation of its hostile policy toward the D.P.R.K.”

The agency said North Korea had put forward a “package solution,” but the United States had unfairly demanded that North Korea dismantle its nuclear program before any deal is reached.

The United States “is asking the D.P.R.K. to drop its gun first while it is still leveling its gun at the D.P.R.K.  What a brigandish demand,” KCNA said (Korean Central News Agency, Sept. 3).

Meanwhile, North Korea’s parliament today backed the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s weekend statement that further talks are “useless” and legislators supported Pyongyang’s deterrence policy.

“The first session of the 11th Supreme People’s Assembly of the D.P.R.K. considered as just all the measures taken by the Foreign Ministry upon the authorization of the D.P.R.K. government, supported and approved them and decided to take relevant measures,” KCNA reported (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Sept. 3).

In other matters, the parliament re-elected national leader Kim Jong Il to serve another five-year term as chairman of the National Defense Commission, which control’s the country’s military forces.  The assembly “broke into stormy cheers of ‘hurrah’ overwhelmed with unbounded emotion, jubilation and ardent reverence,” the national media reported (Associated Press, News24.com, Sept. 3).

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