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South Korea on Sunday rejected accusation of Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) that Seoul pursued a nuclear program for military purposes.
After convening a meeting of the National Security Council, South Korea on Sunday issued a statement over recent revelation that two groups of South Korean scientists respectively conducted plutonium-based experiment 20 years ago and uranium experiment four years ago.
"The recent incidents involving the extraction of nuclear materials were isolated, laboratory-scale scientific experiments conducted at the initiative of a small number of scientists," South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Lee Kyu-hyung said in the statement.
"The Republic of Korea does not have nuclear weapons programs nor any programs for enrichment or reprocessing," he said. "Therefore, North Korea (DPRK)'s allegation that these incidents are manifestly of a military nature is absolutely not true."
Lee also stressed that the issue should not affect the six-party talks on the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, adding that other members of the forum "generally share" the same view.
"The Republic of Korea will strengthen its diplomatic efforts so that the fourth round of the six-party talks can be held before the end of September as agreed upon," he said, adding that he hopes the DPRK will also "come forward in a positive manner."
Seoul's statement came after a spokesman of the DPRK's Foreign Ministry said in a commentary carried by the DPRK's Korean Central News Agency on Saturday that the United States applied "double standards" toward the nuclear issues involving South Korea and the DPRK.
The DPRK official also said "strong suspicions that the disclosed experiments might be conducted on the instructions of the United States as they were military in nature."
He also said, "We cannot but link these cases to the issue of resuming the six-party talks."
Seoul's acknowledgments of the two sensitive experiments touched off speculation about the country's nuclear ambitions, despite Seoul's repeated assertion that they were purely academic activities that have nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
China, the DPRK, the United States, Russia, South Korea and Japan agreed by the end of third round six-party nuclear talks in June to hold new round talks before September. But no exact date was made for the talks yet.
(Xinhua News Agency September 13, 2004)
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