NORTH KOREA has said it may slow the pace at which it takes apart its nuclear plant, which produces bomb-grade plutonium, after the US said it would suspend energy aid to the secretive communist enclave.
The stand-off follows the collapse of the latest round of six-party talks in Beijing involving both Koreas, the US, Japan, China and Russia, aimed at getting North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
Pyongyang has rejected proposals that would allow the international community to verify claims it has made about its nuclear arms programme during an aid-for-disarmament deal last year.
The six countries have been pushing Pyongyang to agree terms under which international experts could analyse samples of soil and waste from the Yongbyon reactor.
North Korea's nuclear negotiator, vice foreign minister Kim Kye-Gwan, played down the US response but warned: "If they [fuel shipments] are not provided, we will adjust the speed of disablement."
North Korea has agreed to give up nuclear weapons but has resisted Washington's attempts to put in place strict measures to ensure it is not hiding any active atomic programmes.
The talks effectively mark the last chance for the outgoing government of George W Bush to fix the North Korean nuclear issue, one of Asia's more intractable diplomatic rows. However, South Korea predicted a fresh start for diplomacy under US president-elect Barack Obama. The remarks came at a historic meeting of Chinese, Japanese and South Korean leaders in Japan's Fukuoka province.
Mr Bush once branded North Korea part of an "axis of evil" but his administration later led the push for the aid-for-disarmament deal, overriding criticism from some US conservatives and policymakers in Japan, which has had tense relations with Pyongyang.
Even before the talks broke down, Japan had refused to provide any fuel aid to North Korea.
Japan has pressed Pyongyang to investigate further the fate of Japanese civilians it kidnapped in the 1970s and 1980s to train its spies.