MANILA, Philippines -- North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho on Monday declared the country would not have any negotiations on its nuclear and missile programs unless the US “fundamentally” deserts what it calls hostile policy.

At the ASEAN Regional Forum in Manila, he sought to claim the legitimacy of the country’s weapons program, which he said resulted from Washington’s decades-old “nuclear blackmail” and hostile policy involving large-scale military exercises with Seoul and strategic assets. Pang Kwang-hyok, deputy director-general of the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s international organization bureau who was serving as the delegation’s spokesperson, released the text of Ri’s speech after the session.

With the nuclear weapons being an “inevitable strategic option” that can “neither be reversed nor bartered for anything,” leader Kim Jong-un meant to send a “stern warning” to the US through the recent tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles, Ri said.

“No other country in this world than the DPRK (North Korea) has been exposed to the nuclear threat of the US for such a long time so directly with such intensity,” Ri said in the address.

“We will, under no circumstances, put the nukes and ballistic rockets on (the) negotiating table. 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 are fundamentally eliminated.”