North Korea says U.N. rights report based on ‘faked’ material

By Stephanie Nebehay GENEVA (Reuters) – North Korea said on Monday a United Nations report on its human rights record due to be issued later in the day was based on material faked by hostile forces backed by the United States, the European Union and Japan. A statement sent to Reuters from the Communist state's diplomatic mission in Geneva said that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea "categorically and totally rejects the report," drawn up by a three-member Commission of Inquiry. The two-page North Korean statement, in English, said the report was an "instrument of a political plot aimed at sabotaging the socialist system" and defaming the country. And it denounced the Commission as "a marionette running here and there in order to represent the ill-minded purposes of the string-pullers, such as the United States, Japan and the member states of the EU." The Commission was set up by the U.N. Human Rights Council a year ago at the request of the European Union, the United States and Japan under a resolution adopted by consensus at the 47-member state forum.