North Korea announces it has nuclear weapons

North Korea today announced for the first time that it has nuclear weapons and rejected moves to restart disarmament talks any time soon, saying it needs the armaments as protection against an increasingly hostile United States.

The communist state’s pronouncement dramatically raised the stakes in the two-year-old nuclear confrontation and posed a grave challenge to US President George Bush, who started his second term with a vow to end North Korea’s nuclear programme through six-nation talks.