North Korea condemns US, NATO summit

SEOUL- North Korea condemned the United States and its allies on Saturday for what it called strengthening military blocs and accelerating arms buildups after a NATO summit this week.

Pyongyang accused NATO leaders of portraying North Korea's exercise of its legitimate sovereign rights as a threat, the foreign ministry said in a statement carried on state media KCNA.

The alliance demonstrated a stronger commitment to bloc-to-bloc confrontation through increased arms spending and closer military cooperation with allies in the Asia-Pacific region, the ministry said.

At the NATO summit in Turkey on Tuesday, officials announced more than $50 billion in military procurement and industrial agreements as European allies face continued pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to shoulder a greater share of the alliance's defence burden.

President Lee Jae Myung of Pyongyang's rival South Korea ‌said on the sidelines of the summit that he hoped Seoul would expand cooperation with NATO ​allies in research and development, ​including in cutting-edge technologies, and in ⁠production of weapons systems.

North Korea said the summit showed that NATO was a body geared towards war and confrontation, pursuing what Pyongyang described as exclusive geopolitical interests at the expense of peace and security in Europe and the Asia-Pacific.

Pyongyang, which says a push by the West for it to abandon nuclear weapons has been irreversibly terminated, believes instead that denuclearisation efforts should focus first on what it described as attempts by South Korea and Japan to pursue their own nuclear weapons under U.S. protection, as well as the nuclear ambitions of NATO members participating in the alliance's nuclear-sharing arrangements, the ministry said.

It said North Korea would safeguard its sovereignty and security interests, as well as regional peace, through the responsible exercise of its sovereign rights.

KCNA said on Friday that North Korea had decided on measures to strengthen ​its nuclear forces "quantitatively and qualitatively" as ‌leader Kim Jong Un calls for modernising its military.

Reporting by Heekyong Yang and Joyce Lee; Editing by William Mallard/REUTERS