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N Korea and US exchange tough words on nuke crisis

REUTERS, Seoul/Washington
North Korea said yesterday that Washington's rejection of bilateral talks to solve a deepening nuclear crisis was illogical and aimed to thwart Pyongyang's efforts to improve its economy and communist system.
North Korea wants a nonaggression pact with the United States, while Washington favours multilateral talks to press Pyongyang to shut down its suspected nuclear weapons program.
War warnings and assertions the United States was poised to attack the North have been daily fare in Pyongyang's official media since the crisis flared up nearly five months ago. North Korea threatened on Tuesday to pull out of the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War if sanctions were imposed on it.
Washington dismissed that as "strident rhetoric" but North Korea hit back with its own dig at the United States.
"The US is insisting on its strange assertion that it cannot respond to the DPRK-US talks as they mean a sort of reward for the DPRK despite the unanimous world
public opinion that DPRK-US direct talks should take place to find a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue," North Korea's KCNA news agency quoted the foreign ministry as saying in a statement.
"This is an illogical far-fetched assertion," the ministry added. DPRK stands for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The statement, which KCNA published on Wednesday, said Washington was desperately trying to hamstring the North's efforts to improve its communist system.
A second KCNA report said the US announcement this week of major annual US-South Korean military drills to be held in March and April "clearly prove that the US reckless plan for a nuclear war has entered the phase of practical implementation."
South Korean President-elect Roh Moo-hyun, to be inaugurated next week, has been caught in the middle of the crisis.
Roh, highlighting a South Korea-US rift that Pyongyang has worked hard to widen, said on Wednesday he differed with the United States because he would rule out a military attack on the North, while
Washington says it retains that option."
"I oppose even considering an armed attack on North Korea at this stage because that can provoke a war which would have serious consequences," Roh told industry leaders.
"We have never had a difference of opinion with the United States on an international level. But we have one now on how we plan to counter North Korea," he said.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer called Pyongyang's comments "predictable," but said President Bush was still searching for a diplomatic resolution.
"This is not the first time that North Korea has used strident rhetoric as a way to blackmail other nations into providing economic or other benefits...," Fleischer said.
Bush and other US officials have repeatedly said Washington has no intention of attacking the North.
It was not clear whether the armistice threat, by the North's Korean People's Army, or KPA, was anything more than fresh brinkmanship. North Korea quit most armistice activities in 1994 and has a history of challenging the truce.