Defiant N Korea vows to build more N-bombs

SEOUL (AFP/Reuters) - A defiant North Korea vowed Saturday to build more nuclear bombs and to start enriching uranium for a new atomic weapons programme after the UN Security Council imposed sanctions for its nuclear test.
The North, describing Friday’s sanctions resolution as a “vile product” of a US-inspired campaign, said it would never abandon nuclear weapons and would treat any attempt to blockade it as an act of war. It also threatened military action if the United States and its allies tried to isolate it.
The 15-member Council voted unanimously Friday to slap tougher sanctions on the North to cripple its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.
The hardline communist state, in a Foreign Ministry statement reported by its official news agency, said all new plutonium it extracts would be weaponised.
One third of used fuel rods from the Yongbyon reactor have so far been reprocessed into weapons-grade plutonium, it said.
“Secondly, we will start uranium enrichment,” it said in its first admission that it has such a programme — a second route to a nuclear bomb.
“It has become an absolutely impossible option for the DPRK (North Korea) to even think about giving up its nuclear weapons,” the statement said, adding that any attempted blockade would be considered an act of war “and met with a decisive military response.”
It added: “No matter how hard the US-led hostile forces may try all sorts of isolation and blockade, the DPRK, a proud nuclear power, will not flinch from them.”
While UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the resolution sent a “clear and strong message” to North Korea, US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said it would be no surprise if Pyongyang “reacted to this very tough sanctions regime in a fashion that would be further provocation.”