NORTH KOREA: North Korea yesterday told the world that it had nuclear weapons, confirming what has been an open secret about the isolated Stalinist state, but upping the stakes in a growing nuclear stand-off on the Korean peninsula.
In a chillingly worded statement that sent ripples of fear around the region, North Korea said it needed nuclear weapons to counter the growing threat of invasion from Washington, which has repeatedly referred to the country as one of the worst offenders in President Bush's "Axis of Evil".
The North Korean foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency: "We have manufactured nukes for self-defence to cope with the Bush administration's evermore undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the (North)."
Some diplomats said the announcement was a negotiation tactic to ensure more economic aid from the United States.
While the threat of nuclear attack was being taken seriously, they said they were still hopeful that a resolution could be found around a negotiation table.
They pointed to hopeful signs in Pyongyang's statement, which also said the North Koreans would not desert the six-party dialogue framework forever.
The admission was described by the US Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, as worrying. "Given their dictatorial regime and their repression of their own people, one has to worry about weapons of that power in the hands of leadership of that nature . . . I don't think that anyone would characterise the leadership of that country as being restrained," Mr Rumsfeld told reporters in Nice where he attended an informal meeting of NATO.
The announcement came through a statement from its foreign ministry spokesman, which North Korea experts say is a sign the move has official backing. North Korea says it believes Washington wants to destroy the regime of reclusive leader Kim Jong Il.
US President Bush started his second term with a vow to end North Korea's nuclear programme through six-nation talks.
However, reading the messages on North Korea is truly a game of smoke and mirrors.
Most commentators believed that North Korea would return to the negotiation table, particularly since Mr Bush made no specific mention of North Korea in his inaugural address when he began his second term on January 20th.
North Korea is effectively bankrupt and has suffered from food shortages for many years. It wants economic compensation and security guarantees in return for abandoning its nuclear programme. While this is not the first time the North Koreans have used an explicit threat to further their aims, it is a significant move because it is the first public announcement that it has nuclear weapons.
The last round of multilateral talks in late June floundered on reported threats by Pyongyang that it would test a nuclear device if Washington did not soften its hard line on North Korea.
The announcement wrecked any chance of success for a fairly wide-ranging compromise package which promised different levels of economic aid and security guarantees in return for the North's comprehensive dismantling of all its programmes to build a bomb.
The nuclear dispute has been running since October 2002, when US officials accused North Korea of running a secret uranium-enrichment program in violation of international treaties.
Washington and its allies cut off free fuel oil shipments for the impoverished country under a 1994 deal with the United States.
North Korea retaliated by quitting the Nuclear Non proliferation Treaty in early 2003 and restarting its plutonium-based nuclear weapons program, which had been frozen under the 1994 agreement.
Pyongyang seems to have taken exception to being referred to as an "outpost of tyranny" in a speech by the US Secretary of State Dr Condoleezza Rice.