Vaclav Havel - North Korea appeal

Former Czech president Vaclav Havel, ex-prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik of Norway and Nobel peace prize laureate Elie Wiesel on Monday urged the United Nations to take North Korea to task over its lamentable human rights record. In a joint article for the New York Times the three leading human rights activists said an independent report they commissioned into North Korea's treatment of its population yielded "deeply disturbing" evidence, for instance that the government had allowed a million - and possibly many more - of its people to die during a famine in the 1990s, when the government diverted resources from food purchases to its military and nuclear programs.