GENEVA
(Reuters) - North Korea said on Monday a United Nations report on its
human rights record due to be issued later in the day was based on
material faked by hostile forces backed by the United States, the
European Union and Japan.
A statement sent to
Reuters from the Communist state's diplomatic mission in Geneva said
that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea "categorically and
totally rejects the report," drawn up by a three-member Commission of
Inquiry.
The text of the report was due to be released in Geneva at 1300 GMT.
The two-page North
Korean statement, in English, said the report was an "instrument of a
political plot aimed at sabotaging the socialist system" and defaming
the country.
Rights violations listed
in the document, forwarded to Pyongyang for comment by U.N. officials
several weeks ago, "do not exist in our country," the statement
declared.
And it denounced the
Commission as "a marionette running here and there in order to represent
the ill-minded purposes of the string-pullers, such as the United
States, Japan and the member states of the EU."
The Commission was set
up by the U.N. Human Rights Council a year ago at the request of the
European Union, the United States and Japan under a resolution adopted
by consensus at the 47-member state forum.
The independent panel is
chaired by jurists from Australia, Indonesia and Serbia. It was barred
from North Korea and took evidence from refugees and defectors who have
fled.
The North Korean
statement suggested the creation of the Commission and the report itself
were part of an effort to change the country's current system of
government under the cover of human rights concerns.
North Korea would
"continue to strongly respond to the end to any attempt of regime-change
and pressure under the pretext of 'human rights protection'," it said.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, writing by Tom Miles, editing by Robert Evans and Jon Boyle)
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