NZDPRK Society On North Korea

Minister of Foreign Affairs, Murray McCully has issued a statement condemning North Korea.

"New Zealand continues to urge North Korea to abandon its nuclear and missile programmes, and instead to focus its energy on improving the lives of its people and on engaging constructively with the international community," Mr McCully says.

This is a cop out which ignores the real issues.

If Minister McCully is genuinely interested in having the DPRK government engage constructively with the international community and in improving the lives of the people of North Korea, a more positive action would be to instruct his officials to formulate New Zealand policies aimed at encouraging:

a. Direct U.S.-DPRK negotiations
b. Suspension of aggressive military exercises
c. An end to the US-led punitive sanctions regime against the DPRK, which devastates the lives of the North Korean people.
d. An end to the Korean War by replacing the 1953 Armistice Agreement with a peace treaty
e. Implementation of the commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by the Nuclear Weapons States to achieve comprehensive nuclear
disarmament.

For a statement from the US Working Group for Peace and Demilitarization of Asia and the Pacific please see:
http://www.asiapacificinitiative.org/statement-in-response-to-third-dprk-nuclear-explosive-test/

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