North Korea fears US attack

NORTH KOREA yesterday accused the United States of planning an invasion and vowed to fight "to the last man," hours after it expelled two UN monitors, leaving its feared nuclear program shrouded in secrecy.

Meanwhile, both South Korea's president and president-elect urged negotiations to end the standoff over their communist neighbour's nuclear ambitions, and warned that pressure from Washington for economic sanctions might not work. The UN inspectors a Lebanese man and a Chinese woman arrived in Beijing yesterday after leaving North Korea, which is preparing to reactivate its suspected nuclear weapons program in defiance of world opinion.

"We cannot comment on anything at this stage," the man said, mobbed by reporters at Beijing's Capital Airport.

An official with the International Atomic Energy Agency, speaking on condition of anonymity, said one inspector would stay on in Beijing for a few days but the other was expected to return to IAEA headquarters in Vienna todayok. North Korea ordered the expulsion of the two UN monitors last Friday, depriving the UN atomic agency of its final means of monitoring a nuclear program Washington fears will be used to produce atomic weapons.

In Vienna, an IAEA spokeswoman said the expulsion of the two UN inspectors had blinded the "eyes of the world" and crippled international efforts to monitor North Korea's nuclear facilities.

"We were the eyes of the world," said Melissa Fleming yesterday. "Now we virtually have no possibility to monitor North Korea's nuclear activities nor to provide any assurances to the international community that they are not producing a nuclear weapon." Fleming said the expulsions left the agency reliant on satellite imagery.

"It's a position this agency does not like to be in," she said. "We need to be on the ground at the facilities directly, in order to be in a position to verify a given country's nuclear declaration."

Escalating the crisis, North Korea's ambassador to Moscow was cited by Russian news agencies as saying that because of US pressure Pyongyang could not make good on its commitments under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which is designed to halt the spread of nuclear weapons. Ambassador Pak Ui Chun said that Washington had threatened North Korea "with a pre-emptive nuclear strike," the Interfax news agency reported.

"These conditions also make it impossible for us to abide by the treaty, whose main provision bans nuclear powers from using nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them."

Meanwhile, US officials said they were considering using heavy economic pressure on the communist North to give up its nuclear ambitions.

North Korea blamed Washington for raising tensions over its nuclear issue.