North Korea’s envoy to U.N. disarmament talks says “military threats and pressure” from the United States are only serving to drive his country to further develop a nuclear deterrence.

Diplomat Ju Yong Chol said Tuesday that other countries which spoke at a Conference on Disarmament session against Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and missile tests had been siding with the “hostile” U.S. position.

Ju accused Washington of attempting to “shift the blame for the tense situation on the Korean Peninsula to DPRK.”

U.S. ambassador Robert Wood warned that North Korea’s ballistic-missile and nuclear-weapons programs “pose grave threats to the entire world” and said its recent intercontinental ballistic missile tests had showed “dangerous and reckless behavior of the North” was destabilizing the region and beyond.

Wood said the “path to dialogue remains open.”

(AP)