North Korea denounced U.S. policies on Monday, and said the goal of Washington’s labeling of Pyongyang as a sponsor of terrorism and producer of biological weapons were to maintain sanctions. Photo by Katherine Welles/Shutterstock

SEOUL, July 13 (UPI) -- North Korea said President Barack Obama should dispatch all 535 U.S. senators and representatives to verify whether a pesticide research facility is being used to produce anthrax.

The statement came on Monday, when a spokesman for Pyongyang's National Defense Commission condemned a recent analysis from Melissa Hanham of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies that suggested Pyongyang Bio-technical Institute was a dual-use facility that could produce biological weapons.


South Korean news agency Yonhap reported North Korea denied the assertion, and said Washington should confirm the claims directly.

"Through that opportunity, [U.S. officials] would see for themselves the impressive state of Pyongyang Bio-tech Institute, which has surpassed state-of-the-art technology," the North Korean spokesman said.

"They can see for themselves what a society that guarantees human rights is really like," Pyongyang said in statement.

On Thursday, Hanham said state-of-the-art equipment appearing in North Korean photographs of Kim Jong Un also were weapon-making facilities that could be used to produce military-size batches of anthrax.

North Korea rejected those claims on Monday, and said the report was an attempt to tear down the dignity of the North Korean state, a "cheap conspiracy that is reaching an extreme."

South Korean newspaper Kyunghyang Sinmun reported North Korea denounced U.S. policies, and said Washington's labeling of Pyongyang as a sponsor of terrorism, a violator of human rights and producer of biological weapons were a ploy to strengthen sanctions, or impose new restrictions.