N Korea warns of war, repeats US talks offer

22 June AFP

A top North Korean envoy said that US hostility could lead to war at any time, but reaffirmed a government offer of talks with Washington that could include the nuclear weapons issue.

At a rare but typically combative news conference, the isolated state's UN ambassador Sin Son-Ho accused the United States of driving up tensions and appealed for an end to UN and US sanctions against Pyongyang.

"The most pressing issue in northeast Asia today is the hostile relations between the DPRK (North Korea) and the US which can lead to another war at any moment," Sin said.

With his country facing mounting UN and international sanctions over its recent nuclear bomb and missile tests, Sin said the North would never give up its atomic weapons.

North Korea "has a legitimate sovereign right to (its) self-defense deterrent as long as the United States continues its hostile policy towards DPRK and threatens it with nuclear weapons."

The country will "never give up (its) self-defense war deterrent." Sin said US-South Korean war games risked leading the Korean peninsula into "another vicious cycle of tensions and conflict". But the warnings were also mixed with the North's new message that it wants talks with the United States. The North's all-powerful National Defense Commission said that it wants talks with the US administration.

"This is our real intention to have talks," Sin said. "In the talks we can have wide-ranging discussions with the United States including those of easing tension on the Korean peninsula.

"Also we can discuss the matter of the world without nuclear weapons the United States has already proposed."