North Korea may strike US forces pre-emptively rather than wait for an US attack after a war with Iraq, a spokesman for the communist state told Britain's Guardiannewspaper in Pyongyang.
"The United States says that after Iraq, we are next", the Guardianquoted Mr Ri Pyong-gap, a North Korean Foreign Ministry deputy director, as saying amid rising tensions over a nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula.
"But we have our own countermeasures. Pre-emptive attacks are not the exclusive right of the US," said Mr Ri, according to the Guardian. His reported remarks went further than numerous recent dire warnings issued by Pyongyang's state media.
A Guardiancorrespondent, one of several British journalists admitted to secretive North Korea this month, quoted Mr Ri as saying that the current nuclear stand-off was more dangerous than that a decade ago when Washington and Pyongyang nearly went to war.
"The present situation can be called graver than it was in 1993. It will be touch and go," the daily quoted Mr Ri as saying.