North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has said that his country is all set to test an intercontinental ballistic missile, adding the last stage preparation for the same is almost complete.
"Research and development of the cutting-edge tech weapons are actively progressing and strengthening our defense capabilities, including last stage preparation of tests for Intercontinental Ballistic rocket launch have been continuously succeeding," CNN quoted Kim, as saying in a televised address on New Year's Day.
Kim's speech was full of usual self-congratulatory, lofty proclamations and anti-Western rhetoric.
Referring North Korea as a nuclear and military power in the east, Kim said the DPRK would keep increasing the military capabilities for self-defense and pre-emptive striking capacity with main emphasis on nuclear force unless the US and its vassal forces stop nuclear threat and blackmail and unless they stop the war exercises which they stage right close to us under the pretext of annual exercises.
Head of the US military's Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris, had said in a December speech that combining nuclear warheads with ballistic missile technology in the hands of a volatile leader like Kim Jong-un is a recipe for disaster.
A senior defence analyst at the Rand Corporation think tank, Bruce Bennett, said North Korea doesn't have good enough missile and rocket technology to deliver a nuke despite Pyongyang's apparent progress on a warhead.
According to the Yonhap News Agency, Thae Yong-ho, formerly No. 2 at the North Korean Embassy in London, said in a news briefing that Kim Jong-un had made it a party policy to finish nuclear development within the earliest time possible after the ruling party's meeting earlier in May.
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