SEOUL, Feb. 10 -- North Korea's government publicly acknowledged for the first time Thursday that it has nuclear weapons and said it was suspending participation in six-nation talks aimed at getting it to abandon its nuclear ambitions.
"We had already taken the resolute action of pulling out of the NPT [nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] and have manufactured nukes for self-defense to cope with the Bush administration's evermore undisguised policy to isolate and stifle" North Korea, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
The North also said it was "compelled to suspend our participation" in six-nation nuclear talks "for an indefinite period."
