N. Korea seeks UN meeting on CIA torture

Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS

North Korea asked the U.N. Security Council in a letter Monday to take up the CIA’s harsh treatment of terror suspects, instead of the North’s own human-rights situation.

North Korea’s U.N. Ambassador Ja Song Nam objected to the inclusion of his country’s human-rights record on the Security Council’s agenda for debate — the first step toward a possible referral to the International Criminal Court.

“The so-called ‘human rights issue’ in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is politically fabricated and, therefore, it is not at all relevant to the regional or international peace and security,” Ja wrote in the letter to Chad’s U.N. ambassador, the current council president.

“On the contrary, the recently revealed CIA torture crimes committed by the United States, which has been conducted worldwide in the most brutal medieval forms, are the gravest human-rights violations in the world,” he added, requesting that the council take up the issue with a view toward establishing “a thorough probe into the CIA torture crimes.”

It is highly unlikely that the CIA issue will ever make it onto the agenda of the council, where the U.S. has veto power. There was no immediate comment from the U.S. Mission to the U.N.