Pyongyang, November 4 (KCNA) -- Ri Ki Thaek, chief vice-chairman of "the Advisory Council for Democracy and Peaceful Unification" of south Korea, some time ago let loose a spate of reckless remarks that "the dismantlement of nukes in north Korea is a major precondition for settling the issue of the inter-Korean relations" and no inter-Korean exchange "has any meaning unless the nuclear issue is solved".

Rodong Sinmun today observes in a signed commentary carried in this regard:

This fully reflects the traitorous "policy towards the north" which the Lee Myung Bak group has followed in zealous pursuance of the U.S. hostile policy towards the DPRK and glaringly reveals its criminal design to drive the inter-Korean relations getting worse as the days go by to uncontrollable catastrophe under the pretext of the nuclear issue.

The nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula is a product of the U.S. aggressive hostile policy towards the DPRK and has nothing to do with the issue of the inter-Korean relations.

The improvement of the relations between the DPRK and the U.S. and the south Korean authorities' drop of their wild ambition to invade the north would automatically lead to the settlement of the nuclear issue.

The fundamental prerequisite to the solution of the issue of the inter-Korean relations is not the nuclear issue but the south Korean authorities' drop of their policy of confrontation with the north and their sincere option to implement the historic June 15 joint declaration and the October 4 declaration. What has happened over the past eight months since the emergence of the pro-U.S. conservative Lee Myung Bak regime eloquently proves that the present deterioration of the inter-Korean relations is not attributable to the nuclear issue but to the treacherous confrontational policy of the puppets negating the above-said declarations and their implementations.

The reality goes to prove that there is no change in the Lee group's policy of confrontation with the north and it is becoming more desperate and vicious in it.

The Lee group going reckless, seized with the idea of confrontation with the north, can never go scot-free. The nation will certainly force it to pay for this crime.