North Korea reacts to U.S., Bush

SEOUL, South Korea -- In its first public reaction to being called part of an "axis of evil," North Korea said President Bush's pronouncement was little short of a declaration of war.\n"The option to 'strike' impudently advocated by the U.S. is not its monopoly," a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said. North Korea, he said, "will never tolerate the U.S.'s reckless attempt to stifle the (North) by force of arms but mercilessly wipe out the aggressors."\nThe statement, carried by the North's official KCNA news agency and monitored in Seoul, was the regime's first since Bush's State of the Union speech Tuesday.\nIn the speech, Bush said North Korea, Iran and Iraq formed an "axis of evil," and that "the United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."\nAn unidentified official North Korea spokesman said, "This is, in fact, little short of declaring a war against the DPRK," or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the communist state's official name.\n"We are sharply watching moves of the United States that have pushed the situation to the brink of war after throwing away even the mask of dialogue and negotiations," he said.\nSince Bush's inauguration, North Korea has regularly churned out similar hard-line rhetoric against Washington.\nSouth Korea and Japan, North Korea's uneasy neighbors, warned that Bush's comments had raised tensions.\n"It cast an ominous dark cloud over Northeast Asia, the Korean peace process in particular," said Baek Hak-soon, a security expert in Seoul's independent Sejong Institute.\nTo observers in Seoul, Bush's speech reaffirmed what they saw as a widening gap between the United States and its closest Asian ally, South Korea, in their ways of dealing with North Korea, a totalitarian regime that U.S. officials say is armed with long-range missiles and up to 5,000 tons of biochemical weapons -- and possibly a few crude nuclear devices.\n"I had an impression that Bush has become overconfident after receiving so much international support for the U.S. war against terror," said Hiroshi Kimura, a political science professor at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies. "It may not be so wise for Japan to go too far in following the United States."\nBush is expected to visit Tokyo and then Seoul Feb. 17-21 to discuss security concerns about North Korea.\nAfter meeting U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in Washington, South Korean Foreign Minister Han Seung-soo said Washington's policy of seeking dialogue with North Korea remained unchanged.\n"North Korea must understand that the Clinton administration has been replaced by the Bush administration, and must come to the table of dialogue as soon as possible," Han was quoted as saying by South Korea's national news agency Yonhap.\nAfter months of policy review, Bush offered to reopen dialogue with North Korea on the North's missile and nuclear programs and its heavy deployment of conventional weapons near the border with South Korea last June.\nNorth Korea, through its news media, has rejected the offer as having too many conditions.\nRelations between the two Koreas that improved vastly following their historic summit in 2000 stalled amid the U.S.-North Korea tension.\nOn Friday, the North Korean spokesman said Bush's "reckless strong-arm policy" made the United States a target of terrorism and urged Washington not to "groundlessly" accuse North Korea of developing weapons of mass destruction and sponsoring terrorism.\nExperts say North Korea has developed missiles that can deliver its biochemical weapons to South Korea and Japan. About 47,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Japan and 37,000 in South Korea.