A spokesman for the DPRK Foreign Ministry issued a statement Thursday in this regard.

The DPRK has made earnest and sincere efforts to promote international dialogue and cooperation in the field of human rights for the purpose of steadily promoting the popular masses' enjoyment of human rights, the statement said, and went on:

In the recent days the DPRK took a magnanimous stand to positively take into consideration the issue of conducting human rights dialogue which had been frozen due to the unilateral action of the EU and the issue of the visit of the UN special rapporteur on human rights issue in the DPRK to it for the purpose of promoting genuine human rights on the principle of respect for sovereignty, agreed with the matter of the visit of the EU representative with full mandate over human rights to the DPRK and expressed an intention to accept technical cooperation with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Nevertheless, international dialogue and cooperation have not been effected in the field of human rights. This is attributable to the U.S. hostile policy to tarnish the image of the DPRK and bring down its social system at any cost by persistently hyping its "human rights issue".

It was none other than the U.S. which let its Secretary of State convene a "high-level meeting on human rights in north Korea" and barred the DPRK, the party concerned, from participating in it for fear of the disclosure of the sinister backstage political confab. It was again the U.S. which prodded into an anti-north smear campaign such human scum as "those defectors from the north" who fled to the south from their old homes and kinsmen after committing thrice-cursed crimes.

Afraid of the possible dialogue and cooperation between the DPRK and the international community in the field of human rights and, accordingly, the further promotion of its people's enjoyment of human rights and the rising international prestige of the DPRK, the U.S. is making desperate efforts to maintain an international atmosphere of pressure on the DPRK, turning its face away from the latter's sincere efforts and raising unreasonable demands.

If the EU adopts an anti-DPRK "human rights resolution" harsher than the previous one, dancing to the U.S. tune, an opportunity of engaging the DPRK over the human rights issue will be missed for good and this will entail unpredictable consequences.

The DPRK will make every possible effort to defend and consolidate the Korean-style socialist system based on the popular masses-first spirit.