The DPRK Vice Foreign Minister Pak Kil Yon, in a speech to the UN General Assembly's general debate on Saturday, accused the United States of breaking a six-party nuclear agreement and vowed to take countermeasures.

"The US has laid an artificial obstacle to implementing the October 3 agreement by refusing to implement her obligations and put forward such an unjust demand as verification of the 'international standard' never agreed on among the six parties or between the DPRK and the US," the DPRK high official said, referring to the nuclear agreement reached by the six parties in Beijing on October 3,2007.

"The 'international standard' asserted by the US is nothing but 'special inspection' which the IAEA called for in the 1990s to infringe upon the sovereignty of the DPRK and caused it to pull out of the NPT (Nonproliferation Treaty) in the end," he said.

"Now that the US has broken the agreement, the DPRK is inevitably taking relevant countermeasures on the basis of the principle of 'action for action,'" the DPRK official said.

Under the 2007 nuclear deal, the DPRK pledged to disable its nuclear program in a step toward its eventual disarmament in exchange for diplomatic concessions and energy aid. But the accord has been stalled due to disputes over the verification of a nuclear declaration between the DPRK and the United States.

(Xinhua News Agency September 28, 2008)