- Obama has said that a satellite launch would deepen North Korea's isolation
- Pyongyang says it won't give up the launch, insisting it's for 'peaceful purposes'
- The move is widely seen as a long-range missile test in disguise
(CNN) -- North Korea said Tuesday that it would not abandon its plan to carry out a satellite launch next month despite recent warnings from President Barack Obama over the move.
The North "will not give up the satellite launch for peaceful purposes, which is a legitimate right of a sovereign state and requirement essential for economic development," Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency reported, citing the country's foreign ministry.
Obama said Sunday that if North Korea moves forward with the launch -- which the United States, South Korea and others say is a way of disguising a long-range missile test -- it will further deepen its isolation, damage relations with its neighbors and face additional sanctions that have already strangled the country.
The North Korean report Tuesday said that Obama's stance "reflects his wrong conception" of the situation.
"The U.S. says that it has no hostility" toward North Korea, the news agency cited the ministry as saying. "But it has not yet departed from the inveterate conception of confrontation. That is why it regards the launch of a satellite for peaceful purposes as a launch of long-range missile."
