- SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea
said on Saturday that any move by the United States to bring Pyongyang's
nuclear crisis to the U.N. Security Council would derail planned six-nation
talks on the issue and could lead to war.
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- "The U.S. intention to bring up the nuclear issue
on the peninsula for discussion at the United Nations at any cost is a
grave criminal act to hamstring all the efforts of the DPRK for dialogue,"
the official KCNA news agency said.
-
- "Any move to discuss the nuclear issue at the U.N.
Security Council is little short of a prelude to a war," KCNA said.
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- It said the resumption of talks depended entirely on
whether Washington dropped what Pyongyang calls its hostile policy toward
the North.
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- North Korea and the United States said on Friday they
had agreed to hold six-way talks on the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear
intentions. China, Japan, Russia and South Korea will also attend.
-
- But rhetoric from Washington and Pyongyang has been at
a higher pitch than usual in recent days.
-
- Undersecretary of State John Bolton, widely seen as a
Bush administration "hawk" on North Korea, said earlier this
week the U.N. Security Council needed to take "appropriate and timely
action" to send a signal to the world it took the North Korean crisis
seriously.
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- KCNA did not refer to comments by Bolton that described
life in the reclusive country as a "hellish nightmare."
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- Bolton said North Korean leader Kim Jong-il was living
like royalty while keeping hundreds of thousands of his people locked in
prison camps, with millions more mired in poverty.
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- The crisis began last October when Washington said Pyongyang
had said it had a covert nuclear program.
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