In a letter to the president of the UN Security Council, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said its "reprocessing of spent fuel rods is at its final phase and extracted plutonium is being weaponized."

The letter, sent Thursday by the permanent representative of the DPRK to the United Nations, also said the "experimental uranium enrichment has successfully been conducted to enter into completion phase," the KCNA reported on Friday.

The letter said DPRK are "prepared for both dialogue and sanctions". It also threatened that "if some permanent members of the UNSC wish to put sanctions first before dialogue, we would respond with bolstering our nuclear deterrence first before we meet them in a dialogue."

The letter reiterated the DPRK's stance of rejecting the UNSC "Resolution 1874" and said it will never be bound by this resolution.

It said the way the UNSC dealt with the DPRK's peaceful satellite launch on April 5, contrasting with its silence over the satellite launch of South Korea on Aug. 25, compelled the DPRK to take strong counteraction such as its second nuclear test.

It said DPRK has never objected to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, but it objected the six party talks which "had been used to violate outrageously the DPRK's sovereignty and its right to peaceful development.".

The UN Security Council adopted a presidential statement in late April, demanding the country "not conduct any further launch."

Pyongyang subsequently announced it was quitting the six-party talks on nuclear disarmament and would restart nuclear facilities in protest of the UN statement. On May 25, the DPRK conducted its second nuclear test.

(Xinhua News Agency September 4, 2009)