TOKYO, February 2. /TASS/. The possible deployment of US nuclear weapons in Great Britain will pose a great threat to world peace and security and will only further exacerbate the deep freeze in the West's relations with Russia, heightening the real danger of a nuclear war, North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.
"In 2008, when anti-war and anti-nuclear sentiments were rising in the UK, the US was forced to withdraw nuclear weapons that had been there for about 50 years. Since then, 15 years later, the US is again trying to place its nuclear weapons there. This is a great threat to world peace and security," the news agency said.
According to it, "the international community is expressing serious concern over the US plot to build up nuclear forces in Europe" as it will further "freeze the relations between the West and Russia in the future and increase the risk of nuclear war in the region."
"The nefarious plan of the US is to grab its allies by the throat under the pretext of 'strengthening deterrence.' In doing so, they see nuclear weapons as a means of maintaining their hegemony and are seeking to establish a global network for the deployment of nuclear weapons," the KCNA article pointed out.
The Daily Telegraph claims that its journalists have found new references in Pentagon documents to a plan that could involve the deployment of nuclear warheads at Lakenheath Royal Air Force (RAF) base in Suffolk, England. The newspaper had previously reported on this possibility. According to the London publication, unredacted Pentagon documents posted on a government procurement website this week and last August refer to the need to purchase additional ballistic protection equipment and hydraulic ramps in preparation for an "upcoming nuclear mission" in the United Kingdom.
A US Defense Department official, responding to a TASS inquiry, did not confirm the Daily Telegraph's information, nor did he deny it. Last September, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Moscow would consider the return of US nuclear weapons to British territory as an escalation. According to the diplomat, the transition of the United States and NATO to a confrontational course toward Russia and the practice of placing Washington's nuclear weapons in other countries forces Moscow to take "retaliatory countermeasures."