North Korea vowed Sunday to ensure a "balance of forces" with the United States through its continued development of nuclear weapons.

"As has been already proved in history, the only way to prevent a war between the DPRK and the U.S., which lack even elementary trust in each other and have long stood in mistrust and hostility only, is for the former to bolster up its defense capabilities so as to ensure balance of forces," the North's foreign ministry said in a statement. The DPRK is the acronym for the communist nation's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

It claimed the U.S. is to blame for the failure of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.

Washington is rather "trying to escape from the responsibility for its totally foiled policy" toward Pyongyang, said the ministry.

The statement came after the top nuclear envoys from South Korea, the U.S. and Japan had a trilateral meeting in Seoul last week.

In the session, the North argued, the three parties attempted to distort the truth by giving the impression that they wanted to have a dialogue but the North refused.

"It is a well-known fact that the DPRK had long called for the resumption of dialogue without preconditions, making sincere efforts for it, but the U.S. prevented it, raising unreasonable 'preconditions,' " the ministry said.

It said the North's nuclear arsenal and missiles are "neither a means for threatening anyone nor a bargaining chip for something."

Those are "self-defensive deterrents to cope with the constant nuclear threat and military invasion from the U.S. and as a force of justice to decisively repel the enemy's invasion and deal a merciless retaliation in case a war breaks out," it said. "If the U.S. fails to draw a lesson any longer, the aftermath will be more tragic." (Yonhap)