U.S. troops in the Korean peninsula

PYONGYANG, March 21 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - North Korea accused the United States Friday, March 21, of preparing a pre-emptive strike on its nuclear facilities to coincide with the war on Iraq.

The official Korean Central News Agency said large-scale joint U.S.-South Korean war games were "timed to coincide with the U.S. attack on Iraq" and to pave the way for nuclear war.

KCNA said Washington had "hurled unusually huge combat forces equipped with sophisticated weapons" into the annual war games with South Korea, including the U.S. aircraft carrier Carl Vinson.

After failing to persuade North Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons drive, Washington intended to settle the crisis by military means and the war games were conceived to fix the "zero hour" for the attack, KCNA said.

North Korea vowed to repulse any attack, with the official news agency saying that the army and people were "fully ready to wipe out the aggressors to the last man at a single stroke."

The news agency issued a factual report on the launch of the Iraqi war late Thursday, March 20, 12 hours after hostilities began, but refrained from commenting on the conflict, which it said had sparked "strong protests and outcries from around the world."

However, KCNA said in a press review that one the government newspapers, Minju Joson, spoke of the disastrous consequences that war would entail, without giving details.

The United States, South Korea, Japan and China have warned North Korea in recent days against taking advantage of U.S. "preoccupation" with Iraq to launch military provocation in order to force Washington to the bargaining table, AFP said.

"North Korea should not take any further steps that undermine stability on the Korean Peninsula or in the international community," South Korea's Unification Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

Many experts believe the Stalinist state, which is demanding direct talks with Washington and a non-aggression treaty, could test-fire a ballistic missile or restart a nuclear plant capable of reprocessing weapons grade plutonium.

North Korea has ramped up pressure on Washington to come to the negotiating table by expelling UN inspectors, firing up a reactor at its mothballed Yongbyon nuclear plant, withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and testing anti-ship missiles into the Sea of Japan.

Earlier this month North Korean fighters intercepted a U.S. spy plane in international waters off the North Korean coast in another escalation of the crisis.

Washington has turned down North Korea's call for one-on-one talks, demanding instead that it scrap its nuclear weapons drive first, then agree to talks in a multilateral setting to resolve the crisis sparked in October by U.S. revelations that Pyongyang was pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

Hundreds of thousands of U.S. and South Korean troops are currently engaged in annual joint military exercises this month, which North Korea maintains are a prelude to nuclear war.

Washington has boosted its firepower around the Korean peninsula in recent weeks, adding six radar-evading Stealth fighters, an aircraft carrier and long-range bombers to its arsenal.