Gates: North Korean threat growing with nuclear, missile programmes

Oct 21, 2009, 9:30 GMT

   Seoul - The danger posed by North Korea has grown as it develops its nuclear and missile programmes and engages in proliferation, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday on a visit to South Korea.

   'The peril posed by the North Korean regime remains and, in many ways, has become even more lethal and destabilizing,' Gates told South Korean and American soldiers in Seoul, according to the national Yonhap News Agency.

   The secretary said the capability of North Korea's ground forces had deteriorated, but the threat the country represents has grown because of its pursuit of nuclear weapons and its spread of nuclear and missile know-how to other regimes.

   'Everything they make, they seem to be willing to sell,' Gates charged, adding that the United States would never accept nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula.

   He arrived Wednesday from a visit in Japan to take part in annual bilateral security talks. Gates is to meet with his South Korean counterpart, Kim Tae Young, Thursday.

   The two countries fought together in the 1950-53 Korean War against the North. Both sides remain technically at war after an armistice, and not a peace treaty, ended that conflict.

   Tensions have continued with isolated, Stalinist North Korea ever since, most recently over its nuclear programme.

   The United States and the two Koreas are involved in talks with China, Japan and Russia aimed at ending Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme. North Korea withdrew from the negotiations in April but has recently indicated it was willing to return to the negotiating table if the United States would engage in direct talks with it.