North Korea toughens nuke stance

PYONGYANG - North Korea says it will resist all international demands on it to allow nuclear inspections or agree to disarm.

It says Iraq made this mistake and is now paying the price.

"The DPRK would have already met the same miserable fate as Iraq's had it compromised its revolutionary principle and accepted the demand raised by the imperialists and its followers for 'nuclear inspection" and disarmament," the ruling party daily Rodong Sinmun said in a commentary.

DPRK is an acronym for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"The DPRK will increase its self-defensive capability and fully demonstrate its might under the uplifted banner of the army-based policy," the article said.

On the divided Korean peninsula American and South Korean forces allied against the North conducted field exercises involving mock battles and amphibious landings.

North Korea said the exercises were an "intolerable provocation".

"A dangerous military aim is sought in staging such manoeuvres in the area very close to the military demarcation line," the North's official Korea Central News Agency said.

"It is clear that the South Korean military is opting for a war against the North, going against the trend of the era of independent reunification," it said.

North Korea is deadlocked with the United States over its suspected nuclear weapons programme.

The latest crisis began in October, when US officials said North Korea had admitted working covertly to develop nuclear arms.

Without formally acknowledging this, North Korea insists any such programme is purely defensive in the face of what it sees as a US military threat to its existence.

The impoverished Stalinist state has started a provocative campaign to force Washington to enter direct talks and negotiate a non-aggression pact.

Over the past month, it has intercepted a US spy plane in international airspace and test-fired two short-range missiles.

A Japanese report said the North may soon test-fire a longer-range missile capable of hitting major Japanese cities.

Relations between the two Koreas, locked in a tense standoff since the 1950-53 Korean War, warmed significantly in 2000 when the South's then president, Kim Dae-jung, held a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

Subsequent rapprochement efforts came almost to a halt after US President George W. Bush took office the following year with a more hardline approach to North Korea.

He later bracketed it with Iraq and Iran in an "axis of evil", accused of seeking to acquire and spread weapons of mass destruction.

The two Koreas remain technically at war. The armistice which ended their 1950-53 conflict never led to a peace treaty.

- REUTERS