NORTH KOREA: North Korea said yesterday it was preparing for total war with the US and threatened a pre-emptive strike if Washington sent extra forces to the region.
The North's top general, Gen Kim Yong-Chun, a close adviser to supreme leader Kim Jong-Il, urged the nation's million-strong army to prepare for a final showdown with US "imperialists".
The US in response said it was ready to deal with "any contingencies" involving North Korea.
White House spokesman Mr Ari Fleischer said the remarks further isolate North Korea internationally. However, he also sought to play down their significance. "We've heard much talk from North Korea before," he told reporters.
"Obviously the United States is very prepared for robust plans for any contingencies. But this type of talk and the type of actions North Korea has engaged in, or says it's engaging in, only hurts North Korea."
According to North Korea's official media, Gen Kim, chairman of the North Korean army's joint chiefs of staff, told military leaders on Wednesday to prepare for battle.
"He called for increasing the capability of the people's army in every way...so as to win a brilliant victory in the final showdown with the US imperialists," said Rodong Sinmum newspaper .
At the same time, a top Foreign Ministry official told visiting British journalists that Pyongyang would not stand idle while Washington boosted its forces in the region.
The pre-emptive strike would come if Washington carried out a plan to reinforce its firepower in the Pacific, said North Korea's Foreign Ministry deputy director, Ri Pyong-Gap, according to the BBC.
"The pre-emptive attack is not something only the United States can do. We can also do that when it is a matter of life or death," Ri said.
"We are fully ready to have a conversation with the United States. At the same time, we are fully ready to have war with the United States."
President Bush has said he wants to resolve the crisis peacefully, but Pyongyang dismissed that as a "smokescreen" to entice the North to drop its guard while Washington prepares invasion plans.
US officials have said the Pentagon has put 24 long-range bombers on alert for possible deployment to the Pacific to back up US forces in South Korea.
Ri said his government would regard any such build-up as an invasion or attack against it.
Rodong said the call for a US troop build-up suggested "a new war will inevitably break out on the Korean peninsula, and it will develop to be a nuclear war". North Korea would answer "total war with a total war", the newspaper reported.
Tension over North Korea's nuclear ambitions mounted yesterday after Pyongyang official media said a nuclear plant frozen for the past eight years under an arms control accord with Washington had been restarted.
The North maintains that its decision to restart the Yongbyon nuclear plant, announced late on Wednesday, was to ease its energy crisis, though experts say the experimental five-megawatt reactor which can produce plutonium has negligible power-generation capacity.
In Washington, the US Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, said North Korea would be making a mistake if it felt it could exploit US preoccupation with Iraq. "To the extent the world thinks the United States is focused on problems in Iraq, it's conceivable someone could make a mistake and believe that's an opportunity for them to take an action which they otherwise would have avoided," he told members of the US Congress.
South Korea's president-elect Roh Moo-Hyun, who takes office in 19 days, responded to the deepening crisis by vowing to preserve peace. "I am going to assure peace in this nation. That's the commitment I make and at any rate I am going to prevent a war on this peninsula." - (AFP, Reuters)