SEOUL, February 11 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Countries around the globe urged North Korea Friday, February 11, to return to talks on ending its nuclear programs after it stunned the world by declaring it already owned nukes and pulled out of disarmament discussions.

The move by the North, in which it effectively announced it had become the world’s eighth declared nuclear power, presents a major challenge to US President George W. Bush, who is focusing on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, according to Reuters.

However, the US administration stopped short of threatening a military aggression on North Korea after the announcement, unlike its fiery rhetoric on Tehran.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday, February 10, the state had been forced to boost its defenses and to acquire nuclear weapons to contend with US hostility and the policy of the Bush administration to seek regime change.

After the announcement, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterated assurances by Bush that the United States did not intend to attack North Korea, and that it is ready to provide security guarantees to Pyongyang.

“Those security assurances would of course include the United States, if they are prepared to take definitive action to dismantle their nuclear programs and to do so in a way that is verifiable,” she said after talks with EU officials in Luxembourg.

She acknowledged that North Korea probably has enough material to make nuclear weapons.

North Korea announced pulling out of the six-way talks, which also involve the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, but left the door open to a possible resumption of negotiations.

The deputy chief of North Korea's mission at the United Nations appeared to reinforce this message.

“We'll return to the six-party talks if conditions are ripe and such a decision can be justified,” South Korea’s Hankyoreh newspaper quoted Han Song-ryol as saying in its Internet edition Friday.

“If the United States wants to talk to us directly, it can be seen as a sign of a change in the US hostile policy toward North Korea.”

The Bush administration has long refused to hold bilateral talks with North Korea over the nuclear crisis, renewing Friday insistence on the six-way formula.

South Korean officials swiftly joined their US counterparts in saying talks were the only solution to end the North’s isolation.

They said the news only confirmed what was already known about the North’s nuclear ambitions.

“Those security assurances would of course include the United States,” said Rice.

China, South Korea and Germany joined calls from the United States and elsewhere for Pyongyang to return to the table.

In the firing line is South Korea, under constant threat from a neighbor that keeps 70 percent of its 1.2-million-strong army along a border that passes just 65 km (40 miles) north of the capital, Seoul.

South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon, in Washington Thursday, said the South could not tolerate the North possessing nuclear weapons.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said his nation, which experts say also lies in the range of North Korean missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, will use the power of persuasion.

“We are going to persuade North Korea by presenting it with a case that its interests are best served by dismantling its nuclear programs,” Koizumi told reporters.

China, one of North Korea's few friends and the country that exercises the most influence there, issued a brief response that it hoped talks would continue and was watching developments, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Analysts, however, raised the possibility the North’s dramatic announcement is a dangerous negotiating tactic aimed at winning concessions in the talks.

“The assessment is that North Korea may be trying to raise its negotiating stakes,” Vice Foreign Minister Lee Tae-shik was quoted as saying.

“But it could turn into a very serious problem if the North takes additional steps.”

Australian Prime Minister Alexander Howard said North Korea has probably exaggerated its nuclear weapons boast to try to bluff its way into a stronger bargaining position in six-party talks.

“There is an element of bluff, I'm sure, there's an element of exaggeration -- even if she does have some nuclear capacity it has probably been exaggerated,” he told Australian television.

Three rounds of six-party talks have been held since August 2003 but a fourth failed to take place last September when North Korea refused to show up.

Other analysts said North Korea might be raising the stakes while US attention was focused on Iran's nuclear programs in order to obtain better terms.

North Korea has engaged in brinkmanship in the past at crucial diplomatic junctures.

Bush has backed a diplomatic solution to the crisis but now faces two nations he once named as part of an “axis of evil” being defiant about their nuclear programs -- North Korea and Iran.

He invaded Iraq, the third “axis” nation, on claims of having weapons of mass destruction, none of which existed in the oil-rich country.