The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, said Sunday that North Korea's nuclear program threatens the world.
While North Korea is one of the world's poorest countries, it has the means to pursue nuclear weapons by counterfeiting currency and selling drugs and weapons, Bolton told a conference of women sponsored by the United Jewish Communities.
"The possibility that North Korea might sell nuclear technology, or highly enriched uranium, or nuclear weapons themselves, to countries around the world that would be fully prepared to pay hard currency for them, makes it clear that North Korea is not simply a threat in Northeast Asia. North Korea is a global threat," Bolton said.
His comments came amid worry that North Korea might soon test a nuclear bomb. In July, the North defied repeated international warnings and test-fired seven missiles, prompting a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the tests.
Negotiations by five nations to persuade North Korea to scrap its self-declared nuclear weapons program have been stalled since November.
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On the eve of the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States, Bolton asked audience members to consider the danger of nuclear weapons in the hands of "the two remaining members of the axis of evil — North Korea and Iran."
U.S. President George W. Bush in his 2002 State of the Union policy speech branded North Korea as part of "an axis of evil" with Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.