KCNA
3/13/2007
The United Nations Development Program recently announced that it would suspend its country program for the DPRK and, accordingly, withdraw the staff members of its office from Pyongyang.
A spokesman for the DPRK Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tuesday answered the question raised by KCNA in this regard.
The responsibility for this abnormal thing that happened in the cooperative relations between the DPRK and the UNDP, which have favorably developed for the past several decades, rests with the U.S. and Japan and some circles inside the organization, who took this discriminative action against the DPRK only, yielding to the pressure of the above-said two countries, the spokesman said, and continued:
The U.S. has spread sheer lies about the DPRK’s “diversion of UNDP’s program fund” since the outset of the year in a bid to tarnish the international image of the DPRK. Taking advantage of this, Japan has pressurized the UNDP to suspend its country program for the DPRK. It wooed some member states of its executive board to reopen the discussion on the already passed country program for the DPRK.
Some officials of the UNDP tried to cancel the country program of developmental nature for the DPRK contrary to its mission under the pressure from outside and adjust it into a country program of humanitarian nature and has unilaterally closed or cancelled the ongoing project.
As regards this discriminative step taken against the country program for the DPRK only, it demanded the UNDP explicitly explain and clarify the step. The UNDP, however, has kept mum about the demand, deliberately avoiding its answer.
The DPRK does not care about whether it receives small assistance from the UNDP or not but it will not tolerate even a bit any foolish attempt to hurt its dignity.
It is the firm stand of the DPRK not to receive any politically motivated assistance seeking a sinister aim in the future, too.
