ISTANBUL

North Korea on Monday sought an end to the crimes committed against Palestinians, urging Israel to leave the Gaza Strip.

“Eighty years have passed since the end of World War II, yet genocide and crimes against humanity that can even overtake Hitler are openly committed in the Middle East, much to the consternation of the world,” Vice Foreign Minister Kim Son Gyong said in his address at the 80th session of the UN General Assembly in New York.

“Israel, which massacred over 60,000 Palestinian civilians in the past two years, is seeking to occupy the whole area of Gaza by force and completely exterminate the Palestinian population,” he said, adding: “We strongly urge Israel to stop immediately crimes against humanity and withdraw from the Gaza Strip. Likewise, we fully support the establishment of an independent state of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and the Palestine full-fledged membership of the UN.”

He said war exercises and military build-up “against our state are breaking all the previous records in terms of scale, nature, frequency and scope.”

To ensure “everlasting peace” on the Korean peninsula, “we have stipulated nuclear in our Constitution as a sacred and absolute thing that can never be touched upon,” Kim said, adding that the denuclearization of North Korea “is a tantamount to demanding it to surrender sovereignty and righty existence and violate the Constitution.”

“We will never give up nuclear, which is our state law, national policy and sovereign power, as well as the right existence under any circumstances. We will never walk away from this position,” he added.

Regarding the role of the UN, Kim said it should “be reformed to be fit for the 21st century.” He, however, also lauded the organization for making “remarkable successes in various fields, including peace and security and socio-economic development, by accelerating decolonization worldwide and leading the codification of universal norms of international law.”