US: The US is playing down North Korea's claim yesterday that it has developed a nuclear bomb, while stepping up warnings to Iran not to create the technology to manufacture a nuclear weapon.
The statement from Pyongyang, declaring itself a nuclear power and announcing it was abandoning six-party negotiations to curtail its nuclear programme, is nevertheless a serious setback for US policy in the region.
The six-party talks were instigated by the Bush administration to recruit North Korea's neighbours, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea to put pressure on the Stalinist regime to disarm.
The talks stalled a year ago and Washington had sent an envoy last week to try to get them started again. The US Secretary of State, Dr Condoleezza Rice, yesterday urged North Korea to return to talks and warned that the reclusive country faced only deeper international isolation.
"We are trying to give the North Koreans a different path," she told a news conference after meeting EU officials in Luxembourg. She said the US and its allies "can deal with any potential threat from North Korea.
"And North Korea, I think, understands that, but the fact of the matter is that the world has given them a way out and they should take that way out. We would hope that there will be six-party talks again, and six-party talks soon, so that we can resolve the issue."
The statement from Pyongyang was being interpreted by many analysts in the US as an act of brinkmanship by a regime which often uses bellicose language to gain more leverage in negotiation for foreign aid.
In Washington there were expressions of concern but no sense of impending crisis. One US official said: "We have heard this kind of rhetoric before," and pointed out that for the first time the North Koreans had expressed in the statement a goal of the "denuclearisation" of the Korean Peninsula.
US intelligence has been saying since the mid-1990s that North Korea has the ability to make nuclear weapons and has reprocessed 8,000 spent fuel rods into plutonium, though it has never carried out a successful test. North Korea's vice-foreign minister, Mr Choe Su Hon, said at the UN in New York in September that his government had "weaponised" nuclear material. North Korea has also privately told US officials that it has nuclear weapons and has threatened to stage a test. What is new is the announcement by Pyongyang that it has "manufactured nuclear weapons" to defend itself from the US.
This comes against a background of briefings of Asian allies by US officials that Pyongyang sold nuclear material to Libya in 2001, and that, therefore, pressure on North Korea to comply with international demands should be stepped up.
President George Bush had toned down his verbal attacks on North Korea, which he declared three years ago to be part of an axis of evil along with Iraq and Iran. However, in her confirmation hearings Dr Rice called North Korea an outpost of tyranny", and Pyongyang singled this out as a reason for withdrawing from the six-party talks.
The relatively soft US reaction reflects the desire of Japan, Russia, China and South Korea not to raise the stakes with Pyongyang and risk armed conflict on the Korean peninsula.
By contrast the US has stepped up its rhetoric against Iran in recent days over nuclear weapons. Mr Bush said on Wednesday that Iran with a nuclear weapon would be a "very destabilising" force, and that it was important for the world to speak with one voice against Tehran's programme.
"The Iranians just need to know that the free world is working together to send a very clear message: Don't develop a nuclear weapon," Mr Bush said.
Dr Rice said during her European trip that negotiations between Europe and Iran over Tehran's nuclear programme could not go on for ever, though she said the US had set no deadline.
If the talks - in which the US has refused to participate - failed to secure verifiable Iranian compliance with European demands to abandon nuclear weapon's research, Dr Rice warned that "Security Council referral looms". This is seen as a clear warning to Tehran that Washington will press members of the UN security council to impose sanctions against Iran.
There has been speculation that Israel or the US might strike at Iran's secret nuclear facilities. Dr Rice said a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear program was "in our grasp" if Europe sent the same tough message as the United States, threatening UN sanctions.