North Korea has warned the United States that any decision to send more troops to the region could lead the North to make a pre-emptive attack on American forces.
US officials said on Tuesday that Washington was considering strengthening its military forces in the Pacific Ocean as a deterrent against North Korea.
They said the reinforcements would help signal that a possible war with Iraq was not distracting the US from a nuclear stand-off with the North.
North Korea also warned that any US strike against its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon would trigger "full scale war".
The North said on Wednesday that it had reactivated the nuclear site and its operations were now going ahead "on a normal footing".
Pyongyang says it will use the facilities to produce electricity "at the present stage".
However, the US and nuclear experts say the Yongbyon reactor, which has been mothballed since 1994, is too small to generate meaningful amounts of electricity.
news.bbc.co.uk
The United Nations nuclear watchdog agency has decided to meet on 12 February to consider asking the UN Security Council to act against North Korea, the head of the agency has said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) wants the UN to consider what to do about North Korea, which last month pulled out of a key anti-nuclear agreement.
"I've exhausted all possibilities within my power to bring North Korea into compliance," said IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei.
news.bbc.co.uk
Pre-emptive attacks on North Korea's nuclear facilities would trigger a "total war," the communist state warned Thursday after U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld labeled the North's government a "terrorist regime."
The harsh rhetoric came a day after North Korea said it was putting the operation of its nuclear facilities on a "normal footing," triggering fears it was about to produce weapons materials.
"When the U.S. makes a surprise attack on our peaceful facilities, it will spark off a total war," the state-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun said in a commentary carried by North Korea's official news agency, KCNA.
Ri Pyong Gap, a spokesman and deputy director at the North's Foreign Ministry, told The London-based Guardian newspaper that the impoverished country was entitled to launch a pre-emptive strike against the United States.
"The United States says that after Iraq, we are next," the paper quoted Ri as saying, "but we have our own countermeasures. Pre-emptive attacks are not the exclusive right of the U.S."
It's customary of the North to launch saber-rattling invectives against Washington when it has a dispute to settle.
foxnews.com |
