North Korea 'in full combat readiness' to face US

North Korea today said its people and armed forces were all ready to repel what it described as American plans to invade the Korean Peninsula.

US officials suspect Pyongyang may be moving closer to developing nuclear weapons, and Washington is reportedly considering sending military reinforcements to the region. They denied having any plans to invade North Korea.

But the North’s state media kept up its daily tirade against what it said were US “imperialist” moves.

“Our military and people are in full combat readiness to cope with US imperialist warmongers’ indiscriminate military and political moves under their strategy to dominate the Korean Peninsula,” one military official told the North’s official Radio Pyongyang.

“With confidence that we will win, soldiers and people have entrusted their fate and future to (North Korean leader Kim Jong Il), and risen as one,” the official said during a visit by Kim to a military base.

North Korea’s main communist party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, also urged the country’s army reservists – estimated at 1.8 million – to remain alert and unite around “the supreme commander,” Kim Jong Il.

“Away from the military, you are away from the supreme commander and pushed to the sidelines, away from the army-first era,” said the paper.

North Korean men are conscripted at the age of 16 and serve in the country’s regular 1.1 million-member armed forces for seven to 10 years.

Kim has toured several bases in the past week, including some near the heavily fortified border with South Korea.

North Korea accuses the US of escalating the nuclear stand-off as a pretext to invade the communist country. Washington denies it.

The US military says 2,900 soldiers in South Korea may be ordered to extend their stay by six months. The development comes amid a US military build-up in the Gulf region.

ABC News said Washington had decided to send another aircraft carrier to the region. CBS News also said the top US military commander in the Pacific had asked for about 2,000 more troops, mostly air force personnel, to join the 37,000 US troops already in South Korea.

In Honolulu, Hawaii, US navy commander John Fleming declined to confirm or deny the report, saying it was military policy not to discuss future plans.

On Friday, US officials said spy satellites detected covered trucks apparently taking on cargo at the North’s main nuclear facility, where spent nuclear fuel rods are stored.

If reprocessed, enough plutonium could be extracted from the 8,000 rods to make four or five nuclear weapons, they said.

Analysts were divided over whether North Korea was trying to reprocess the rods to make bombs or just bluffing to bring the United States to the negotiating table.

The nuclear dispute began in October when US officials said the North had admitted having a second nuclear programme in violation of a 1994 agreement with Washington.

Washington and its allies in December suspended oil shipments to North Korea promised under the 1994 deal.

In return, Pyongyang has taken steps to restart its first nuclear programme, which was suspected of being used to make atomic weapons. They also expelled UN monitors and pulled out of a global nuclear arms control treaty.

Despite mounting international pressure, North Korea remains defiant.

The United States wants to bring the issue before the UN Security Council, which could eventually impose economic or political sanctions on the impoverished North. Pyongyang has rejected the move.

The United States is “trying to achieve its dirty aggressive goals by stealing the name of the United Nations,” Radio Pyongyang said today.