UN sanction will spark merciless war: N Korea

The warning came after US officials last month hinted at bringing North Korea to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions if it continued to cold-shoulder talks on the country's nuclear weapons drive.

"Sanctions mean a war and war does not know any mercy," said Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency monitored here.

"If the US applies more sanctions to the DPRK (North Korea) by putting the UN in motion, the DPRK will promptly and resolutely react to it with self-defensive war deterrent force."

The agency said the United States would "be wholly responsible for all ensuing fatal consequences" if war breaks out.

Two years into the nuclear standoff, hectic diplomacy has yielded little.

North Korea failed to show at a fourth round of six-party talks scheduled to open in September in Beijing, saying it was staying away because of the "hostile" US policy towards Pyongyang and reports of secret nuclear experiments in South Korea.

The United States, the two Koreas, Russia, China and Japan met for three inconclusive rounds of talks in Beijing prior to the North Korean boycott.

Some analysts have said Pyongyang may be waiting out the US presidential elections on November 2. But North Korea says it does not care who is US president, and will resume talks only when the United States drops its "hostile" attitude.

Analysts and some officials have questioned whether the time may not be ripe to attempt to nudge the process ahead by putting Pyongyang under pressure from the threat of UN sanctions.

The nuclear dispute flared in October 2002 when Washington accused Pyongyang of operating a nuclear weapons program based on enriched uranium in violation of a 1994 agreement.

In February 2003 the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declared North Korea in violation of non-proliferation accords after it pulled out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The IAEA referred the case to the UN Security Council which expressed concern but took no action.

In Seoul last week, IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei said the failure to take action had set "the worst precedent of all" to would-be nuclear proliferators, telling them there were no consequences for violations.

Meanwhile, the possibility of North Korea launching a ballistic missile has diminished as activities at missile bases in the Stalinist state were returning to normal, a Japanese press report says.

As a result, the Japanese destroyer Kongo equipped with an Aegis missile tracking system has been ordered home from the Sea of Japan (East Sea) facing the Korean peninsula, the major daily Yomiuri said, quoting Japanese Defence Agency sources.

North Korean military activities stepped up in early September, including vehicular movement in and around ballistic missile sites, alerting the United States and its Asian allies against a possible missile launch.

"The series of the military activities seem to have just been exercises by North Korean forces," Yomiuri quoted a government source as saying. "Though the activities have not ceased completely, 70 percent of the forces have returned to normal operations.

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North Korea's Rodong missile, with a range of some 1,300km, can hit most areas in Japan.