North Korea said today the hardline US stance at the Beijing nuclear negotiations meant there was no point in holding further talks and left it with no choice but to enhance its nuclear deterrent force.
China - North Korea's closest ally and organiser of last week's six-way talks - sought to keep the momentum for dialogue going.
A North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman told the North's KCNA news agency Washington had adopted a harder line at the talks and had demanded Pyongyang "drop its gun first".
"How can the DPRK trust the US and drop its gun?" the spokesman said, using the initial letters of the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. "Even a child would not be taken in by such a trick."
China, which used unprecedented diplomatic leverage to arrange the meeting, said it hoped the talks aimed at defusing the nuclear crisis would continue, as agreed yesterday. It also repeated its opposition to nuclear weapons on the divided Korean peninsula, but stopped short of condemning the North's comments.
"We hope all parties will continue to make efforts and continue the process of dialogue," the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
But the North Korean spokesman said the Beijing talks - also attended by China, Japan, Russia and South Korea - were a trick aimed at disarming the isolated communist state.
The US delegation had hardened its stance by saying it would negotiate fully with North Korea only once the North had scrapped its nuclear development programme, he said.