The United States should drop its hostile policy first, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) could then drop its nuclear program, a DPRK foreign ministry spokesman said on Tuesday.

"When the U.S. nuclear threat is removed and South Korea is cleared of its nuclear umbrella, we will also feel no need to keep our nuclear program," the official KCNA news agency cited the unnamed spokesman as saying.

Denuclearization was not only an issue for the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, but the whole of it, he said.

"It is twisted logic to assert that bilateral relations can be improved only when we show our nuclear program before anything else, and this is a distortion of the spirit of the September 19 Joint Statement," he said.

The principle of "action for action" can never be an exception as far as the issue of verification is concerned, he said, adding that denuclearization of the south part should also be verified.

"All nuclear weapons states should meet and realize simultaneous disarmament," he said.

The latest round of the six-party talks on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue ended early in December without a deal on verification, as the DPRK and the United States differed over related issues.

(Xinhua News Agency January 14, 2009)