The United States last night formally rejected a call by North Korea for direct talks about their confrontation over Pyongyang's nuclear programme.
US State Department spokesman, Mr Richard Boucher, said the only way out of the current crisis was for Pyongyang to renounce its nuclear programs.
North Korea had called for a mutual non-aggression pact but Mr Boucher said: "The issue is not non-aggression, the issue is whether North Korea will verifiably dismantle this nuclear enrichment program."
North Korea described the standoff today as "very serious and unpredictable". The comment, by the official KCNA news agency, came as South Korea pushed a compromise to end the row with a meeting with Russian officials in Moscow.
North Korea said yesterday its decision to restart its nuclear programme was an act of self-defence but that it was willing to talk to Washington and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Washington announced in October that the North had admitted to a nuclear weapons programme and has said it will not reward bad behaviour by holding talks with the North.
North Korea set off further alarm bells by reactivating the Yongbyon nuclear complex mothballed under a 1994 deal with Washington and capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium.
The United Nations nuclear watchdog agency will propose giving North Korea a chance to cooperate and allow inspections of the country's atomic programme to resume, an informed source said today.
The source said U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mr Mohamed ElBaradei is likely to recommend that North Korea, which has expelled UN inspectors and restarted its nuclear weapons programme, receive another opportunity to recant before the IAEA takes the matter to the UN Security Council.
"It's pretty clear that they're not going to take this straight to the Security Council," a UN source told reporters in advance of a Monday report by Mr ElBaradei to the IAEA board of governors.
AFP