North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has declared that Pyongyang is abandoning its moratoriums on nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests, state media reported Wednesday.
"There is no ground for us to get unilaterally bound to the commitment any longer," the official KCNA news agency cited him telling top ruling party officials.
"The world will witness a new strategic weapon to be possessed by the DPRK in the near future," it cited him as saying.
Mr Kim declared in 2018 that the North had no further need for nuclear or ICBM tests, and Wednesday's announcement threatens to upend the nuclear diplomacy of the last two years, with US President Donald Trump regularly referring to Mr Kim's "promise" to him not to carry any out.
But nuclear negotiations between the two have been largely deadlocked since the breakup of their Hanoi summit in February, and the North set the US an end-of-year deadline for it to offer fresh concessions, or it would adopt a "new way".
Mr Kim's statement to a full plenum of the central committee of the ruling Workers' Party made clear that the North was willing to live under international sanctions to preserve its nuclear capability.
