Pyongyang blames U.S. over Libya

North Korea has voiced its opposition to what it calls the armed aggression of a sovereign country under the pretext of an anti-terror campaign, Pyongyang’s state media said yesterday. The accusations appear to be thinly veiled accusations against the United States over the crisis in Libya.

A North Korean envoy also implied that the U.S. is guilty of killing civilians in the Middle East, calling it an act of terrorism and a human rights violation, the Korean Central News Agency said, without naming the country.

“The acts of armed aggression of sovereign countries under the pretext of an anti-terror campaign should never be condoned under any circumstances,” the envoy said last week at a U.N. special session.

The comment by an unidentified North Korean envoy came amid an international air campaign against Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces. The U.S. has handed over the Libya operation to its allies in NATO.

The North Korean envoy also said the North firmly maintains its consistent stand of opposing all forms of terrorism and any support for it, the KCNA said, noting that Pyongyang will fulfill its responsibility and duty to end terrorism.

The North Korean diplomat’s remarks came weeks after a bipartisan group of U.S. members of Congress submitted legislation to re-designate North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism for a series of provocations.

North Korea has a track record of terrorist attacks against South Korea, including the 1987 bombing of a South Korean airliner near Myanmar that killed all 115 passengers aboard.

The attack prompted Washington to put Pyongyang on its terrorism blacklist but the U.S. removed the North from the list in 2008 to facilitate the talks on ending the North’s nuclear weapons programs.

The South Korean government claims the North torpedoed a South Korean warship and shelled a South Korean island last year, killing 50 people, mostly soldiers, and plunging inter-Korean relations to their lowest level since the 1950-53 Korean War.

The Obama administration said recently it has not yet found enough evidence to relist North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Yonhap