North Korea refuses to halt launch plan....despite Obama's warnings

(CNN) -- North Korea said Tuesday that it would not abandon its plan to carry out a satellite launch next month despite recent warnings from President Barack Obama over the move.

The North "will not give up the satellite launch for peaceful purposes, which is a legitimate right of a sovereign state and requirement essential for economic development," Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency reported, citing the country's foreign ministry.

During his visit to South Korea this week, Obama has said that if North Korea moves forward with the launch -- which Washington and Seoul say would breach U.N. Security Council resolutions through the use of a long-range missile -- it will further deepen its isolation, damage relations with its neighbors and face additional sanctions that have already strangled the country.

The North Korean report Tuesday said that Obama's stance "reflects his wrong conception" of the situation.

"The U.S. says that it has no hostility" toward North Korea, the news agency cited the ministry as saying. "But it has not yet departed from the inveterate conception of confrontation. That is why it regards the launch of a satellite for peaceful purposes as a launch of long-range missile." Read More