SEOUL, July 13 (UPI) — North Korea said President Barack Obama should dispatch all 535 U.S. senators and representatives to verify whether a pesticide research facility is being used to produce anthrax.
The statement came on Monday, when a spokesman for Pyongyang’s National Defense Commission condemned a recent analysis from Melissa Hanham of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies that suggested Pyongyang Bio-technical Institute was a dual-use facility that could produce biological weapons.
South Korean news agency Yonhap reported North Korea denied the assertion, and said Washington should confirm the claims directly.
“Through that opportunity, [U.S. officials] would see for themselves the impressive state of Pyongyang Bio-tech Institute, which has surpassed state-of-the-art technology,” the North Korean spokesman said.
“They can see for themselves what a society that guarantees human rights is really like,” Pyongyang said in statement.
Last Thursday, Hanham said state-of-the-art equipment appearing in North Korean photographs of Kim Jong Un also were weapon-making facilities that could be used to produce military-size batches of anthrax.
North Korea rejected those claims on Monday, and said the report was an attempt to tear down the dignity of the North Korean state, a “cheap conspiracy that is reaching an extreme.”
South Korean newspaper Kyunghyang Sinmun reported North Korea denounced U.S. policies, and said Washington’s labeling of Pyongyang as a sponsor of terrorism, a violator of human rights and producer of biological weapons were a ploy to strengthen sanctions, or impose new restrictions.
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