SEOUL-- North Korea denounced Wednesday a recent meeting of the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) on Afghanistan as "ridiculing" the international community, accusing the United States and western countries of their double standards about addressing "human rights crimes."

The North's foreign ministry said in a statement posted on its website that the U.S. and the West "talk of respecting human rights when they neglect their own acts of human rights crimes and are again ridiculing the international community."

"In general, it is customary for those who commit a crime to remain silent for fear of their guilt and identity being revealed. But such an emotional logic does not work for them," it said.

It went on to criticize what it claimed to be the "human rights crimes" committed by the U.S. and the West of "forcing some 470,000 peaceful residents and tens of thousands of children in Afghanistan into wrongful deaths and producing more than 10 million evacuees."

The foreign ministry called that "the same way of thinking as colonialists" who "recklessly slaughtered the natives of the enemy with guns and knives and advocated it as a product of 'democracy.'"

It was referring to the UNSC meeting convened last Friday to discuss the situation in Kabul, now under control of the Taliban after the U.S. withdrew its troops from the war-torn country late last month.

At the meeting, the UNSC unanimously adopted a resolution renewing the mandate of the U.N. Assistance Mission on Afghanistan, in which it called for the importance of the establishment of an "inclusive government" and upholding human rights.

Source: Yonhap News Agency