North Korea steps up war of words

Kim Jong il's publicists stuck to their noisy hostility yesterday, accusing the United States of "working hard to bring a holocaust of a nuclear war" on the Korean peninsula.

President George Bush has branded North Korea as part of an "axis of evil" and has repeatedly refused to change his stance amid threats by Pyongyang to start up a nuclear weapons production line.

But on Tuesday, almost three months since the crisis began, Mr Bush shifted ground. Until then, the Bush administration had refused to enter talks unless Pyongyang first eliminated its nuclear programme. Now the US has dropped pre-conditions by signing up to a joint statement with Japan and South Korea, saying it is willing to talk "about how [North Korea] will meet its obligations to the international community".

The official Korean Central News Agency blamed the US for creating an "increasing danger of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula". It urged the two Koreas to "pool their efforts and condemn and frustrate the US nuclear policy for aggression".

The change in Washington's stance marks the second time that the North Koreans have chalked up diplomatic points recently. They are trying to extract a non-aggression pact from Washington, unmoved by Mr Bush's insistence that the US has no intention of mounting a military attack.

The United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency says Pyongyang only has a "matter of weeks" to do readmit its inspectors or it would refer the issue to the UN Security Council.