Pressure won't solve nuke crisis: N Korea

Communist North Korea said Tuesday US-led international pressure will fail to resolve the nuclear crisis and Pyongyang will never accept the United States' terms for dialogue.

Washington has recently softened its hardline stance towards Pyongyang, offering talks and economic aid if the North Korean regime scraps its nuclear drive.

But Rodong Sinmun, the mouthpiece of North Korea's ruling Workers Party, said the proposals were meaningless as long as preconditions were attached.

"The DPRK (North Korea) can never accept such US demands," the newspaper said in a commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

"The key to the solution of the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula does not lie in the DPRK's (North Korea's) abandonment of its 'nuclear program' before dialogue," it said.

"The United States should drop its hypocritical and improper attitude toward 'dialogue' and give the DPRK legal security assurances by signing a non-aggression treaty with it."

As Washington stepped up its drive to heap international pressure on the regime, Pyongyang also hit out at US efforts to isolate it over the crisis that has prompted North Korea's withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and threats to restart a mothballed nuclear plant.

"If the US persists in its moves to isolate and stifle the DPRK, the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula can never be settled," the newspaper said in a separate commentary carried by KCNA.

Meanwhile, the United States strengthened the international alliance against North Korea's nuclear program on Tuesday, as its top disarmament official visited South Korea for talks with military leaders.

US Under Secretary of State for International Security and Arms Control John Bolton arrived in Seoul as Russia declared it fully backed the United States' drive to eliminate North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

"We have the same goal: to enforce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (that North Korea abandoned)," Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov said on television in Moscow.

Mamedov was speaking after hearing the preliminary results of an apparently successful mission by Russian envoy Alexander Losyukov to North Korea.

Losyukov held a surprise meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il that lasted for six hours on Monday, during which he presented Russia's plan to defuse the nuclear crisis.

Under Russia's peace strategy, the United States would be required to guarantee not to launch a military attack against North Korea, while offering economic and humanitarian aid to the impoverished nation.