North Korea on Wednesday claimed the United States had recognised it as a nuclear weapons state after a US defence report described it as such.
The outgoing Bush administration has not acknowledged North Korea as a nuclear weapons state as it pushes on with six-party talks aimed at scrapping the communist country’s atomic weapons.
Negotiators were meeting Wednesday in Beijing for a third day during the latest round of talks.
“The US government ranked the DPRK (North Korea) among nuclear weapons states,” Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency said.
“It is the first time that the US officially recognized the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state and announced it in its government report,” it added.
