North Korea's top leaders vowed yesterday to push ahead with nuclear weapons development in a defiant gesture at a massive parade celebrating the 55th anniversary of the Stalinist government.
Up to 1 million people, including strongman Kim Jong-il, gathered in Pyongyang's Kim Il-sung Square as North Korea's army chief took a swipe at the US and extolled the nation's nuclear weapons drive.
Fears that the Stalinist state would go a step further and test a missile or a nuclear bomb proved unfounded.
Neither did the regime showcase any new missiles or military hardware in the 90-minute parade of civilians and soldiers.
"There was no military technical hardware in the parade. Only uniformed military units marching in columns," said Poland's ambassador to North Korea Wojciech Kaluza, who attended the ceremony.
Kim Yong-chun, chief of the general staff of the Korean People's Army, said in a speech at the start of the parade that North Korea would build up its nuclear arsenal, according to the official Korean Central News Agency, monitored in Seoul.
The US believes North Korea has up to two nuclear weapons and could build half a dozen more from spent nuclear fuel within months.
"The DPRK [North Korea] will continue to increase its nuclear deterrent force as a means for just self-defense in order to defend the sovereignty of the country as the United States has not yet shown its will to drop its hostile policy toward the DPRK despite the DPRK's good faith and magnanimity," Kim was quoted as saying.
The parade was lower key than some commentators had predicted. Speculation mounted ahead of it that Pyongyang could unveil a new intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of targeting US bases on the Pacific island of Guam and the Japanese island of Okinawa.
Most analysts and South Korean officials dismissed reports that the regime would carry out its threat to test a nuclear bomb.
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