N Korea raises its nuclear rhetoric

N KOREA: North Korea has threatened to boost its atomic potential as a way of "countering Washington's warmongering" in the …

N KOREA: North Korea has threatened to boost its atomic potential as a way of "countering Washington's warmongering" in the latest bout of sabre-rattling in the increasingly tense nuclear stand-off on the Korean peninsula.

"We will continue to expand our atomic forces as long as the United States conducts policies to isolate and suffocate North Korea," Kim Yong-nam, president of North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly, said in a speech.

His potent threat to yet again raise the stakes in the increasingly bizarre impasse came in an hour-long address to the talking-shop parliament in Pyongyang, quoted by Russia's Itar-Tass news agency.

Pyongyang insists that it needs nuclear weapons to face down the threat of invasion from the US, which has repeatedly referred to the country as one of the worst offenders in President George W. Bush's "axis of evil".

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Mr Kim, who is effectively supreme leader Kim Jong-il's deputy, is the highest-ranking official to confirm Pyongyang's intention to bolster its nuclear arsenal.

In another defiant move, Pyongyang has called on the US to stop scheming to drag other countries into a new war on the peninsula and has warned it not to forget that North Korea "is a mighty possessor of nuclear weapons".

Using the traditional fiery rhetoric of the isolated state, Mr Kim combined the threat with a call on North Koreans to "strengthen the unity of the army and the people, to strengthen our ideological position and to protect the state from the imperialists".

North Korea declared in February that it possessed nuclear weapons and it has since said it is boosting that arsenal to counter what it calls hostile US policies.

The assembly had gathered to mark the "Day of the Sun", as North Korea calls the anniversary of the birth of its founder, Kim Il-sung, the late father of current leader Kim Jong-il.

The nuclear dispute has been continuing since October 2002, when US officials accused North Korea of operating a secret uranium-enrichment programme in violation of international treaties.

Three rounds of six-party talks aimed at coaxing Pyongyang into scrapping its nuclear ambitions took place up to mid-2004 but made little progress. A scheduled fourth round, again bringing together the two Koreas, the US, Japan, Russia and China, never took place because of North Korea's refusal to return to the table.

North Korea is effectively bankrupt and has suffered food shortages for many years. It wants economic compensation and security guarantees in return for abandoning its nuclear programme.

Washington cut off free fuel-oil shipments to the impoverished country, agreed under a 1994 deal. North Korea retaliated by quitting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in early 2003 and restarting its plutonium-based nuclear weapons programme, which had been frozen under the 1994 agreement.