hankyoreh

North Korea's Foreign Ministry on Saturday denounced Western news media for saying that the communist state is helping Iran to prepare an underground nuclear weapon test.

The North was reacting to Wednesday's report by the Daily Telegraph that said North Korea has agreed to help Iran carry out its own nuclear weapons test.

Quoting an unidentified European defense official, the British newspaper said Pyongyang has invited a team of Iranian nuclear scientists to study the results of its underground test to assist Teheran's preparations to conduct its own test, possibly by the end of this year.

"Their assertion is nothing but a sheer lie and fabrication intended to tarnish the image of the DPRK by charging it with 'nuclear proliferation,'" the North's official Central News Agency quoted an unnamed spokesman for the Foreign Ministry as telling its reporter, referring to North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"As solemnly declared more than once by the DPRK, it will continue to sincerely honor its duty it had assumed before the international community in the field of nuclear nonproliferation as a responsible nuclear weapons state," the spokesman stressed.

North Korea carried out its first-ever underground nuclear weapon test on Oct. 9. Western experts believe that Iran is pushing its own nuclear weapons program.

Both countries were labeled part of "an axis of evil" by U.S. President George W. Bush in 2002. It is no secret that the two countries have been cooperating on missile development.

Seoul, Jan. 27 (Yonhap News)