Pyongyang calls on Korea to unite against America

North Korea called on South Koreans to unite with it against America yesterday, a day after expelling inspectors from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency.

Pyongyang issued a defiant New Year's message which talked of running an "army-based policy" and building a "powerful nation" which would be able to counter an American invasion.

The US has branded North Korea a member of "an axis of evil", a move some believe is responsible for the current crisis in which Pyongyang has threatened to restart its frozen nuclear programme.

South Korea's Deputy Foreign Minister, Lee Tae Shik, flew yesterday to China, an ally of the Communist North which fought beside it in the 1950-53 Korean War. His mission is to press for a more active mediating role from China. He is expected to travel to Moscow for talks next week with a similar message.

Desperately impoverished, short of fuel, food and friends, and worried about its long-term survival, North Korea is thought to be pursuing the confrontation to pressurise Washington into a new non-aggression pact.

North Korea's Central News Agency, a conduit for the Stalinist regime's utterances, said the US was "becoming all the more frantic in its moves to stifle [North Korea], openly clamouring about a pre-emptive nuclear attack on it".