North Korea Supports Nuclear Weapons Ban Globally, Its Envoy Says

North Korea has offered to join the international efforts for a total ban on nuclear tests, said Han Tae Song, its ambassador to the United Nations during the disarmament conference in Geneva on Tuesday.

"The discontinuation of nuclear tests is an important process for global disarmament, and the DPRK will join the international desire and efforts for a total halt of nuclear tests," he said, using North Korea's official acronym, The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

North Korea has said it will dismantle its only known nuclear test site this month ahead of the meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un on June 12. But, Pyongyang is yet to rejoin the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which it withdrew from in 2003.

The nation is believed to have tested six nuclear weapons.

This is the first time North Korea has expressed an intention for total halt on use of nuclear weapons. This raises expectations that the country will join the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

Though the treaty has not been enforced yet, it is signed by 166 countries and prohibits all kinds of nuclear tests, including ones for peaceful purposes.

Last month, North Korea announced it will stop nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests.

“DPRK will further make peace efforts to achieve the development of inter-Korean relations, defuse acute military tensions and substantially remove the danger of war on the Korean peninsula,” Han said.

"It will make sincere efforts to establish a durable lasting peace mechanism with its neighbor to the south,” he added while urging the other nations to support the “current positive climate,” reported India's DD News.

Han also dismissed the notion that North Korea expressed their desire to denuclearize due to international pressure and sanctions.

U.S. Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament and U.S. Special Representative for Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) Issues Robert Wood described the summit as "a historic opportunity to achieve peace on the Korean peninsula" and said he "welcomes the professed commitment by North Korea to end nuclear tests and missile launches and the shut-down of its nuclear test site.”

"We hope North Korea will seize the moment and take the bold steps necessary to lead North Korea to a peaceful and prosperous future,” Wood added.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) welcomed the move. “I am encouraged to see reports that the DPRK permanent representative to the Conference on Disarmament declared his country’s intention to ‘join international efforts to ban nuclear tests,” Executive Secretary Lassina Zerbo of CTBTO said in a statement.

North Korea said it will completely destroy the Punggye-ri test site in a ceremony scheduled between May 23 and 25. This move was welcomed by Seoul and Washington, the Straits Times reported.

The Punggye-ri site in the north-east of North Korea has been the site of all six of the North's nuclear tests. The latest and the most powerful nuclear test was conducted in September last year, which Pyongyang said was an H-bomb.