A North Korean soldier eyes a soldier from South Korea in the demilitarized zone between the two countries

Pyongyang, June 9 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - North Korea admitted publicly for the first time Monday, June 9, that it was seeking nuclear weapons and blamed "hostile" US policy for forcing it to develop a deterrent.

Since the nuclear crisis erupted eight months ago, North Korea has often referred to its possession of a powerful physical deterrent, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

But Pyongyang has carefully avoided admitting in public to either seeking or possessing nuclear weapons.

"We have no other option but to have nuclear deterrence if the United States keeps its hostile policy and continues its nuclear threat towards the DPRK (North Korea)," the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Monday.

Pyongyang regularly accuses Washington of planning a preemptive strike on the Stalinist state.

The KCNA commentary stopped short of saying Pyongyang has already developed nuclear weapons, though North Korea has confessed as much in private, according to Washington.

The nuclear crisis was triggered in October last year when U.S. assistant secretary of state James Kelly traveled to Pyongyang to confront the regime with evidence it was engaged in a clandestine nuclear weapons program.

North Korea confessed outright to running the program based on highly-enriched uranium and said it had a right to nuclear deterrence, according to Kelly.

Pyongyang blamed a "hostile" U.S. policy characterized by U.S. President George W. Bush's designation of North Korea as part of an "axis of evil." U.S. officials, however, assert that the program predates the Bush administration by several years.

On the sidelines of talks with the United States in Beijing in April, also attended by China, North Korea said it actually possessed nuclear weapons and was reprocessing plutonium in order to acquire several more, according to U.S. officials.

The United States believes that North Korea possesses one or two nuclear bombs from a nuclear program based on plutonium that was frozen under a 1994 bilateral accord.

The collapse of the accord sparked an escalating crisis marked by the expulsion of international inspectors from North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex north of Pyongyang and North Korea's withdrawal from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

KCNA also explained North Korean thinking behind its drive for nuclear deterrence, denying U.S. charges that it was using blackmail to win concessions from Washington in the nuclear standoff.

"Our desire to have a nuclear deterrent is not to blackmail anybody, but to reduce conventional weaponry and thus convert human resources and funnel money into economic construction and the people's lives," KCNA said in a Korean-language commentary monitored here by South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

KCNA also indicated North Korea already possessed other "powerful" weapons that were less expensive than nuclear bombs, and was seeking to bolster that arsenal.

U.S. and South Korea intelligence believe North Korea has a large stockpile of chemical and biological weapons.

"We will strengthen a powerful physical deterrent that costs less but can incapacitate any high-tech or nuclear weapons unless the United States gives up its hostile policy towards North Korea," KCNA said.

North Korea wants to resolve the crisis through one-on-one talks with the United States while Washington says multilateral negotiations are needed to resolve a threat to world peace.

Pyongyang is also demanding security guarantees from Washington before it will address U.S. "security concerns" about nuclear weapons.