North Korea declared for the first time today that it possesses nuclear weapons and pulled out of talks on its atomic ambitions.
The United States Secretary of State Ms Condoleezza Rice played down the announcement saying Washington had assumed since the mid-1990s the secretive communist state possessed the ability to make nuclear weapons.
Despite the revelation, a White House spokesman said Washington was committed to a diplomatic resolution of the nuclear issue with North Korea .
"[We] have manufactured nukes to cope with the Bush administration's evermore undisguised policy to isolate and stifle the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] ," the foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
"Nuclear weapons will remain a nuclear deterrent for self-defence under any circumstances," the ministry added.
It is the first time the country has publicly said it has nuclear weapons and is Pyongyang's first response to US President George W Bush's inauguration speech on January 20th when said - in a clear reference to countries including North Korea - that he was committed to ending tyranny.
Today's statement poses a challenge to Mr Bush, who has long backed a diplomatic solution to the crisis but now faces two nations he once named as part of an "axis of evil" being openly defiant about their nuclear programs - North Korea and Iran.
Speaking in Luxembourg, Ms Rice said the United States had no intention of attacking or invading North Korea and she hoped the talks, which also involve South Korea , China, Japan and Russia, would resume soon.
"The fact of the matter is that the world has given them a way out and they should take that way out," she said.
Russia's foreign ministry regretted the declaration of intent to build up its nuclear arsenal while Britain deplored the announcement. And Japan and South Korea urged the Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear programs.
China said it hoped the talks would resume, noting that Beijing had persistently sought denuclearization along with peace and stability on the Korean peninsula.