US ‘seeks to stifle North Korea by force’

NORTH KOREA accused the United States yesterday of seeking to stifle the communist country with plans to boost troops stationed in and near the Korean peninsula as part of a possible war against Iraq.

Pyongyang has portrayed US contingency plans to beef up forces in the western Pacific during any Iraq hostilities as actual deployments that foreshadow an attack.

“This arms build-up eloquently proves that though they pretend to seek a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula, they are, in actuality, keen to stifle the DPRK by force,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, referring to the country by its official name. The commander of US forces in the Pacific this year asked the Pentagon for more troops, aircraft and warships to deter any North Korean “adventure” should the US go to war with Iraq.

“Once the US imperialists unleash a new war on the Korean peninsula, it will soon develop into a nuclear war and both the North and the South of Korea will suffer from it,” KCNA said, echoing earlier warnings of “horrible nuclear disasters”.

President George W Bush said on Friday he wanted to use diplomacy to resolve the nuclear stand-off with Pyongyang but would not rule out other options. Pyongyang’s latest comments follow a nuclear impasse that began in October when Washington said Pyongyang was trying to enrich uranium in violation of a 1994 accord.

Since December, North Korea has expelled International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors, withdrawn from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, restarted the mothballed Yongbyon complex and threatened to resume missile tests.

North Korea’s state media has kept up a steady stream of bombastic rhetoric after a senior diplomat in Pyongyang said that “pre-emptive attacks are not the exclusive right of the US.”

The two Koreas remain technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended without a peace treaty.

Meanwhile, aid workers and diplomats in Pyongyang have warned that North Korea is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

“Since November, the situation has steadily deteriorated. It is now very dramatic, very depressing,” said Anahit Sadoyan of the World Food Programme. In an interview with The Observer, a top government official responsible for disaster prevention urged donors not to cut support.