North Korea is developing a nuclear capability in order to deter the United States which is threatening to attack the country, an American author and investigative journalist in Philadelphia says.

Dave Lindorff, a columnist for Counter Punch and a contributor to Business Week and other news organizations, made the remarks on while commenting on former President Jimmy Carter�s statement about US foreign policy.

Carter, 92, said on Tuesday the Trump administration should engage directly with the North Korean leadership and discuss a peace treaty to replace the ceasefire - the Korean Armistice Agreement -- that ended the Korean War in 1953.

Carter stated the North Koreans want a treaty that guarantees Washington will not attack unless North Korea attacks America or an ally, particularly South Korea. Until we talk to them and treat them with respect - as human beings, which they are - I don�t think we�re going to make any progress, he said.

Lindorff said he thinks that President Carter is correct completely.

The policy of threatening North Korea with an attack, and maybe even with nuclear weapons attack, or decapitating the regime is precisely why North Korea is developing its nuclear capability, and developing a missile capability to actually threaten the territorial US, because they saw the governments that the US targets that don�t have nuclear weapons, like Saddam Hussein�s Iraq or Colonel Gaddafi�s Libya, he said.

So he is correct that the US is completely wrong in accepting the facts on the ground that North Korea is nuclear power now, and that they are not going to give that up. So you have to talk to them respectfully, and as painful as it might be, reach some kind of a settlement maybe, where the US would finally sign a peace treaty with South Korea finally, he stated.

The Korean Peninsula has been locked in a cycle of military tensions since the 1950-1953 Korean War, which ended in an armistice. No peace deal has been signed, meaning the two Koreas remain technically at war. The US was an ally of South Korea during the war.

The US is against North Korea�s nuclear weapons but Pyongyang says it will not give up on its nuclear deterrence unless Washington ends its hostile policy toward the country and dissolves the US-led UN command in South Korea. Tens of thousands of US soldiers are stationed in South Korea and Japan.