North Korea pours scorn on 'absurd' claims over nerve agent

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March 1, 2017 3:26 PM

Malaysian police say two women used the VX agent to kill Kim Jong-Nam at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on February 13.

North Korea's state media has identified the victim only as Kim Chol -- the name under which Jong-Nam was travelling

North Korea Wednesday poured scorn on "absurd" claims that one of its people was killed in Malaysia with a highly lethal nerve agent, accusing South Korea and the US of running a smear campaign.

Malaysian police say two women used the VX agent to kill Kim Jong-Nam, half-brother of the North's leader, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport on February 13.

CCTV footage shows the pair, an Indonesian and a Vietnamese, approaching him and apparently rubbing a cloth over his face. They appeared in court Wednesday charged with murder.

South Korea says the North Korean government of Kim Jong-Un ordered the killing of Kim Jong-Nam and engaged two outsiders to carry it out. Malaysia has arrested one North Korean and named several others as suspects.

The North, in a dispatch on the official KCNA news agency, identified the victim only as Kim Chol, the name under which Jong-Nam was travelling.

It was "the height of absurdity to claim that the person who applied VX, a substance fatal to the life even in case of inhalation of a tiny amount of it or its touch of skin, was left unaffected and the person to whom it was applied met a death," KCNA cited unidentified experts as saying.

The agency said the arrested women had visited South Korea several times in the past and it was "highly possible" that Seoul allowed them to carry whatever substance was used.

It also claimed that the United States was introducing "all kinds of chemical weapons" into South Korea.

"This being a hard fact, the US and the South Korean authorities are kicking up an anti-DPRK (North Korea) smear campaign, groundlessly pulling it up," it added.

Washington was trying "to stir up international repugnancy towards the DPRK, lay an international siege for putting pressure on it and provoke a nuclear war against the DPRK at any cost," it added.

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