North Korea on Thursday issued a strong warning against the US’ demand for the North’s complete denuclearization, saying the regime will take it as “declaring a war.”

This came in statements by an official in the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, after the US called for a UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution against the North’s missile launches and human rights abuses in North Korea.

“The US representative to the UN again… spouted a litany of rhetoric about the outdated ‘complete, verifiable and irreversible’ (CVID) and the ‘human rights situation,'” he added.

“Any force should keep in mind that if it tries to apply CVID to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), it will be dealt with resolutely in accordance with the DPRK’s law on nuclear force policy,” he said.

“The pressure on the DPRK to dismantle its nukes precisely means a declaration of war,” he said.

The UNSC held 10 rounds of meetings last year to discuss the North’s ballistic missile launches but failed to produce a formal document due to opposition from China and Russia.

The US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield called on all UNSC member states to join in issuing a resolution against the missile launches and human rights violations in North Korea, and to work for the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Source: Qatar News Agency