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Seoul to back UN resolution on North

South Korea will vote in favor of a UN resolution on alleged human rights violations in North Korea, an official said yesterday, a move expected to anger Pyongyang amid the latest deadlock in nuclear talks.

"We will vote for the resolution" at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, a senior Foreign Ministry official said.

He asked not to be named as he did not want to comment publicly before the vote takes place later this week.

The move by conservative South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who took office last month, is a change from South Korea's previous decade of liberal governments who were reluctant to publicly criticize the North.

"I love North Korean people more than anybody else, and I believe the North Korean people should get to a point where they can enjoy the minimum basic happiness of human beings," Lee said yesterday in a meeting with Unification Ministry officials, South Korean pool reports said.

He did not directly mention the UN vote.

Since 2003, South Korea has only once voted for a UN resolution on the North's human rights -- after its nuclear test in October 2006. In other votes, the South either abstained or stayed away out of concerns its criticism might hurt ties and efforts to resolve an international nuclear standoff with the North.

Seoul's decision will likely draw an angry reaction from the North, which has yet to satisfy Washington's demands for a full accounting of its nuclear programs under an agreement reached last year.

The official said the UN resolution would express concern about alleged human rights violations in North Korea, which international advocacy groups say is among the world's worst abusers.

The resolution also calls for a one-year extension of the mandate of Vitit Muntarbhorn, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, the ministry official said.

Vitit has been tasked with investigating the human rights situation in North Korea, but the North has never allowed him to visit.

North Korea has long been accused of a range of rights abuses, including restricting all civil rights and running a network of prison camps believed to house some 200,000 political detainees.

Pyongyang rejects any criticism of its human rights record as part of a US attempt to overthrow the regime.

Also yesterday, the South Korean president again called on North Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons programs to ensure its stability and economic prosperity.

Separately, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Kim Tae-young told a parliamentary hearing that the North had enough plutonium to build six to seven nuclear weapons, but said he couldn't confirm whether the country had produced any new bombs.
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