Washington - US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed Wednesday that the United States will never establish normalized relations with North Korea as long as the Stalinist state has nuclear weapons. "Current sanctions will not be relaxed until Pyongyang takes verifiable, irreversible steps toward complete denuclearization," Clinton said. "Its leaders should be under no illusion that the United States will ever have normal, sanctions-free relations with a nuclear-armed North Korea."
Clinton's remarks came during a speech at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington to outline US nuclear and global non-proliferation policies. North Korea has twice carried out detonations of nuclear weapons in recent years and efforts to restart six-nation nuclear disarmament talks with Pyongyang.
Clinton said international treaties must be strengthened to prevent more countries from obtaining nuclear weapons and preventing terrorists from acquiring nuclear technology. She said the UN nuclear monitoring body known as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) does not have the resources to ensure nations are complying with their international obligations.
She faulted the IAEA for failing to detect Syria's construction of a nuclear reactor destroyed by Israeli war planes in September 2007, or Iran's second uranium enrichment plant that had been kept secret for years until the United States provided the IAEA with intelligence showing its existence.
"The International Atomic Energy Agency doesn't have the tools or authority to carry out its mission effectively," she said. "We saw this in the institution's failure to detect Iran's covert enrichment plant and Syria's reactor project."
