Manila — North Korea vowed on Monday that tough new UN sanctions would not stop it from developing its nuclear arsenal, as it rejected talks and angrily warned the US of retaliation. The message of defiance was the first major response to the US-drafted sanctions, which the UN Security Council unanimously approved over the weekend and which could cost North Korea $1bn a year. The North’s sole major ally China, accused by the US of doing too little to rein in Pyongyang, piled on the diplomatic pressure by vowing to fully implement the new sanctions. "We will under no circumstances put the nukes and ballistics rockets on (the) negotiating table," North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-Ho said in a statement released in the Philippines capital Manila where he was attending a regional security forum. "Neither shall we flinch even an inch from the road to bolstering up the nuclear forces chosen by ourselves unless the hostile policy and nuclear threat of the US against the DPRK (North Kor...
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