NORTH KOREA: A defiant North Korea, facing pressure to scrap a secret nuclear weapons programme, has warned the US it would take unspecified "tougher counter-action" if Washington did not accept talks on the issue. Breaking its silence over last week's revelation by the US that the communist state had acknowledged it was secretly pursuing a uranium reprocessing programme, North Korea said Washington must "opt for reconciliation and peace".
"If the US persists in its moves to pressurise and stifle the DPRK [North Korea] by force, the latter will have no option but to take a tougher counter-action," the ruling party daily Rodong Sinmun said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
In Moscow, the US undersecretary of state, Mr John Bolton, sought to increase diplomatic pressure on North Korea, saying its uranium enrichment programme was "real and dangerous".
Mr Bolton was in Russia as part of a tour of Asian and European capitals to enlist support to halt North Korea's arms programme by diplomatic means. He was later going on to London and Paris.
He told reporters he had passed on to Russian officials confidential information about the North Korean programme and he expected the issue to be discussed when US President George Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet next Saturday in Mexico.
"I should tell you that our very careful, very deliberate, very prudent assessment of the information is enough to convince us that this programme is real and dangerous no matter what the North Koreans say," he said.
"What we've said is that they are seeking production scope capability to produce weapons grade uranium and that that effort is a violation of the non-proliferation treaty and a grave cause of concern to us, to the states in the region and to the world as a whole," he said.
On Monday, North Korea's deputy leader, Mr Kim Yong-nam, told South Korea's visiting unification minister that the communist state was ready for dialogue.
The US ambassador in Seoul, said Washington sought to pre-empt a crisis through diplomacy, but that North Korea had exhausted its credibility with the secret nuclear programme.
"We have very little basis for trust in North Korea, very little basis for confidence that further dialogue will lead to a solution," said envoy Mr Thomas Hubbard.
A South Korean cabinet-level delegation, which has been in North Korea for talks since Saturday, delayed their planned return to Seoul yesterday because they were unable to agree on the language of a joint statement on the nuclear question.
South Korean media pool reports from Pyongyang said North Koreans refused the South's demand for explicit language committing the North to swiftly resolving the nuclear issue.
Faced with US evidence, senior North Korean officials acknowledged in early October that their country had been processing uranium to build weapons.
The admission puts North Korea in violation of at least four international commitments, including a 1994 "Agreed Framework" with the US which averted an earlier crisis. - (Reuters)