North Korea continued its scathing verbal attacks Thursday against the adoption of a landmark U.N. resolution on its grave human rights record, again threatening a fresh round of nuclear tests.

A U.N. committee on Tuesday approved the text condemning the “longstanding and ongoing systematic, widespread and gross” rights breaches in line with a Commission of Inquiry study released in February.

The panel has been endorsing a resolution to address the situation each year since 2005. But the latest one unprecedentedly calls for the Security Council to take the issue to the International Criminal Court and levy targeted sanctions against the key perpetrators, prompting Pyongyang’s strong protests.

The North called the move a “political swindle” aimed at building the logic for an “armed intervention,” citing the U.S.-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.

“We will sternly punish and wholly reject the forcible passage of the U.S.-orchestrated resolution,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

“As the U.S.’ hostile acts are making it impossible for us to refrain from a new nuclear test, our war deterrent will be reinforced without limits to counter its plot for an armed intervention and invasion.”

Choe Myong Nam, deputy director-general of North Korea’s U.N. mission, told the committee that the resolution was the product of political and military confrontation and plots against his government.

He said the COI report was full of “fabricated testimonies” from a handful of criminal defectors. He accused the United States and its allies of being behind a campaign against Pyongyang, and he appeared to threaten the resumption of internationally forbidden nuclear tests.

“The outrageous and unreasonable human rights campaign staged by the United States and its followers in their attempts to eliminate the state and social system of the DPRK is compelling us not to refrain any further from conducting nuclear tests,” he said.

North Korea has in recent months been ramping up diplomatic efforts to water down the language of a resolution on its human rights record, which was chiefly authored by the European Union and Japan.

During an unprecedented meeting with senior North Korean officials two weeks ago in New York, Marzuki Darusman, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, was asked to remove two sensitive clauses in the resolution by top Pyongyang officials, which are related to the accountability of the supreme leader and a possible referral to the International Criminal Court. In return, they offered a visit to Pyongyang, he said.

But Darusman stressed the need to simultaneously pursue cooperation and accountability to induce the regime to change course and promote its human rights record.

By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)