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N Korea warns US against UN talks

North Korea said yesterday that any move by the US to bring Pyongyang's nuclear crisis to the UN Security Council would derail planned six-nation talks on the issue and could lead to war.

"The US intention to bring up the nuclear issue on the peninsula for discussion at the UN 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 UN Security Council is little short of a prelude to a war," KCNA said.

It said the resumption of talks depended entirely on whether Washington dropped what Pyongyang calls its hostile policy towards the North.

North Korea and the US 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 UN Security Council needed to take "appropriate and timely action" to send a signal to the world it took the North Korean crisis seriously.

KCNA did not refer to comments by Bolton that described life in the reclusive country as a "hellish nightmare."

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.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Friday that North Korea might consider freezing its nuclear program if multilateral talks go well and it receives an assurance from the US that it will not be attacked.

He also called for the talks on North Korea's nuclear program to get under way soon.

Washington had long pushed for multilateral talks on the international standoff over North Korea's nuclear program. Pyongyang, however, had for months insisted on bilateral talks, calling it a US-North Korea issue that didn't involve other nations, but on Thursday it agreed to the multinational format.

The secretary-general was asked whether North Korea might freeze its nuclear activities during the talks.

"I'm not sure if there's indication that they will freeze it [the nuclear program] during these talks," Annan told The Associated Press. "But there has been suggestions that if there is a discussion and agreement and an assurance that their nation is not under threat, they will be prepared to consider freezing it and ... resuming inspection with atomic agency."

"But I'm not sure that they have given an indication they will do it before the talks. I suspect it will be part of the outcome of the talks," he said.

The nuclear dispute flared in October when US officials said North Korea admitted it had a clandestine nuclear program in violation of a 1994 agreement with Washington. The US and its allies responded by suspending fuel shipments promised under the agreement.

Pyongyang retaliated by expelling International Atomic Energy Agency monitors, restarting facilities capable of making fuel for nuclear bombs, and withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It also told US officials it had reprocessed 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods.

No date has been set for the multilateral talks, which are expected to be held in China, and no decision has been made on the level of the officials who will attend.
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