He said he hoped the session under the theme of the "Sustainable Development Goals: A Universal Push to Transform Our World" would make a meaningful contribution to promoting peaceful development and prosperity of all countries.

Peace and security are the permanent theme of the United Nations and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) presuppose peace and security, he noted, and went on:

Even at this very moment when the UN aspires after transformation for sustainable development, the world is besieged with wild wind of terrorism, sweeping refugee crisis due to disturbances of war and increasing global hot spots instead of their fall.

Among them, the Korean Peninsula has now been turned into the world's most dangerous hot spot where even a nuclear war may break out.

As the international community witnesses every year, the situation on the Korean Peninsula is often engulfed in a state that goes out of control, whose root-cause squarely lies in the United States which does not abandon its hostile policy towards the DPRK but holds aggressive war exercises one after another in and around the Korean Peninsula.

In the international arena at present, the globally recognized fundamental principles of international relations are openly ignored by the US-led imperialist forces in their outrageous schemes for domination and intervention while justice is criminalized as injustice depending on the interests of the imperialist powers.

In dealing with the issue of the Korean Peninsula, the UN Security Council is now playing the role of covering up the high-handedness and arbitrariness of the United States in the name of the United Nations, ignorant of justice and international law.

The recent 17th NAM summit adopted the Margarita Declaration condemning the promulgation and application of unilateral coercive measures against countries of the Movement in violation of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, particularly the principles of non-intervention, self-determination and independence of the states.

This is the common position of the NAM countries that take up nearly two thirds of the UN membership and this is the true voice of the international community.

International justice never comes by itself, but can be achieved only when the independent countries against imperialism grow strong.

To bolster nuclear force is the consistent line of the DPRK.

As long as there exists a nuclear weapon state in hostile relations with the DPRK, our national security and the peace on the Korean Peninsula can be defended only with reliable nuclear deterrence.

The DPRK will continue to take measures to strengthen its national nuclear force both in quantity and quality in order to defend the dignity and right to existence and safeguard genuine peace vis-a-vis the increased nuclear war threat of the United States.

In order to safeguard global peace and security by realizing genuine international justice and to achieve the UN-set SDGs, the old international order where injustice prevails under the disguise of "justice" should be destroyed to give way to a new international order of impartiality and justice.

The Government of the DPRK will push ahead with the vigorous struggle to remove the root cause of the threat of nuclear war imposed by the United States, by means of powerful nuclear deterrence, safeguard the peace and security of the Korean Peninsula, Asia and the world at large and to denuclearize the world.