North Korea blamed the United States yeserday for blocking six-country talks on scrapping its nuclear programmes, denying it had stalled the talks itself to await the outcome of the US presidential election. A commentary by the North’s official KCNA news agency said the multi-party talks – between the two Koreas, the United States, Russia, Japan and China – could resume only if Washington dropped its “hostile policy” towards the North.

The commentary also said any attempt by Washington to refer the nuclear issue to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions could result in war. The North described as “sheer nonsense” what it said were assertions by U.S officials blaming Pyongyang for “deliberately delaying the talks, waiting for the outcome of the US presidential election in the hope that the six-party talks can be represented by a better partner from the United States”.

The nuclear impasse began in October 2002 when US officials said North Korea, when confronted with evidence, had admitted it was pursuing a secret uranium enrichment programme. The communist state now denies having such a programme, and has demanded energy aid and diplomatic concessions in return for freezing an older, plutonium-based nuclear arms programme. That programme, believed to have produced enough weapons-grade plutonium for one or two atomic bombs, was frozen in 1994, but restarted in early 2003. “The DPRK’s stand to seek a negotiated settlement of the nuclear issue remains unchanged”, the statement said, referring to the initials of the North’s official title, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The KCNA statement pinpointed recent comments by US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage suggesting that the nuclear crisis could be handed to the UN Security Council.

“If the US applies more sanctions to the DPRK by putting the UN in motion, the DPRK will promptly and resolutely react to it with self-defensive war deterrent force”, it said. Armitage said in a recent interview with Japan’s NHK that it was a mistake for North Korea to try to wait for the result of November’s US elections before resuming nuclear talks.

“I have stated in the past, I think this is a miscalculation on their part, but we’re in no hurry,» Armitage said. However, he also said in the interview that six-way talks were the best way to resolve the nuclear impasse and there was “no rush to go the UN”.

The latest KCNA statement repeated Pyongyang’s frequent assertion that Washington had a military option on the table to threaten the North. It also said the United States was ignoring recent revelations that South Korean researchers enriched uranium in 2000 and extracted plutonium in 1982.

The administration of US President George W. Bush accused North Korea, pre-war Iraq and Iran of forming an “axis of evil” for their suspected pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. China has hosted three rounds of six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear issue. The countries agreed at their last round in June to meet in September, but the meeting never took place.