North Korea says it wants to have nuclear weapons to reduce the size of its huge conventional forces and divert funds into an economy that analysts say is near collapse.
The North's official KCNA news agency said today if the United States did not give up its hostile policy, Pyongyang would have no choice but to have a nuclear deterrent.
"We are not trying to possess a nuclear deterrent in order to blackmail others but we are trying to reduce conventional weapons and divert our human and monetary resources to economic development and improve the living standards of the people," KCNA said.
It was the first time North Korea had linked its nuclear programme to the idea of cutting conventional forces. North Korea has one of the largest armed forces in the world with 1.1 million troops, many of them forward-deployed near the Demilitarised Zone that bisects the Korean peninsula.
Washington originally wanted any talks with Pyongyang to include conventional forces but later dropped that precondition.
