North Korea cuts off contact with military monitor

North Korea today cut off the only regular military contact with the US-led United Nations Command that monitors the Korean War armistice, accusing America of trying to attack the communist state.

The announcement came as politicians from across North Korea convened the country’s parliament amid heightened tension over the state’s suspected nuclear weapons programme.

In a telephone message to the UN Command, the North’s Korea People’s Army said it would no longer send its delegates to the liaison-officers’ meeting at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom.

“It is meaningless to sit together with the US forces side to discuss any issue as long as it remains arrogant,” the North’s official news agency KCNA quoted the North Korean message as saying.

The UN Command, which has monitored the armistice since the end of the 1950-53 war, had no immediate comment. Without a peace treaty, the Korean Peninsula is still technically at a state of war.

The 687-member Supreme People’s Assembly usually meets once or twice a year in Pyongyang to approve a new budget.

North Korea’s Central Radio reported that at the opening of the parliamentary session, the deputies paid tribute to the statues of leader Kim Jong Il and his father, late President Kim Il Sung, vowing to remain loyal to the totalitarian regime.

Yesterday North Korea said it was boosting its defences, claiming US forces may attack and spark a “second Iraqi crisis” on the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea accuses Washington of inciting a dispute over its alleged programmes to develop nuclear weapons to create an excuse for invasion.

US president George Bush has branded the North part of an “axis of evil” with Iraq and Iran.

Washington says it seeks a diplomatic solution to the crisis – but Bush has said that if diplomacy fails a military solution may be considered.