A North Korea threat to display a "nuclear deterrent" at an appropriate time has been dismissed in South Korea as bluff, and US officials say they see nothing new in the latest escalatory rhetoric from Pyongyang.
In comments published late last night by the official KCNA news agency, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said the country would move to end debate over its nuclear status if the United States delayed a solution to a year-old nuclear impasse.
"When an appropriate time comes, the DPRK will take a measure to open its nuclear deterrent to the public as a physical force and then there will be no need to have any more argument," the spokesman said, noting that some people doubted that the North had nuclear capability.
Yesterday's statement did not spell out how North Korea might display its "deterrent".
In Washington yesterday, US Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters: "They've said things like that before, and I don't know what they mean."
Earlier this month, North Korea said it had redirected plutonium extracted from thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods to help enhance its deterrent force. In 1994, US intelligence officials estimated the North had processed enough plutonium for two bombs.
Government officials in South Korea, which has lived with North Korean threats for decades, said they saw another attempt by the isolated communist state to grab US attention.
"This looks like bluffing," said Mr Rhee Bong-jo, policy chief of the National Security Council. He told reporters South Korea should avoid overreacting to the statement.