A satellite image of the Yongbyon facility, 55 miles north of the capital Pyongyang, in North Korea

SEOUL, January 12 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Pyongyang unleashed Sunday, January 12, a new stream of invective after threats to restart missile tests, as a top U.S. envoy arrived in Seoul for talks on the escalating nuclear crisis in North Korea.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly will hold talks with President-elect Roh Moo-Hyun and Foreign Minister Choi Sung-Hong.

Roh, who succeeds outgoing head of state Kim Dae-Jung on February 25, has been playing a lead role in South Korean efforts to mediate an end to the standoff, but Pyongyang has so far snubbed all moves to water down tensions.

Kelly last week hosted trilateral talks on the crisis in Washington with South Korea and Japan.

After the meeting, the United States offered to hold talks with North Korea, although it insisted it would not "negotiate" over its demand that Pyongyang brings itself back into line with its nuclear commitments.

However, North Korea has shown few signs of ending its game of brinkmanship and announced it no longer considers itself bound by nuclear agreements.

The enigmatic regime's Ambassador to China, Choe Jin-Su, said Saturday, January 11, the "moratorium about missile test fire will be no exception now that the United States has made invalid all the agreements reached between the U.S. and DPRK (North Korea)," reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Washington said in October that Pyongyang had admitted running a secret enriched uranium nuclear weapons program in violation of a 1994 agreement, and responded by halting fuel shipments.

North Korea retaliated by reactivating the mothballed Yongbyon nuclear plant, expelling U.N. monitors and then withdrawing Friday, January 10, from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which limits possession of nuclear weapons to the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain.

North Korea's ambassador to Austria said Saturday that the Yongbyon complex would be up and running in a matter of weeks.

There was no let-up in the regime's brinkmanship Sunday as it threatened to "mercilessly punish" the United States if its NPT withdrawal was met with sanctions, and called on the Korean people to unite against their common enemy. 

U.S. Blamed, Not Feared

In a series of editorials in the ruling communist party's Rodong Sinmun newspaper, Pyongyang sought to heap the blame for the current standoff entirely on Washington, which it accused of planning an invasion.

"If the U.S. and its followers come to challenge the DPRK (North Korea) over its withdrawal from the NPT with another pressure and sanctions, the DPRK will counter them with a stronger self-defensive measure," one warned.

Another called on "all political parties, organizations, classes and social strata in the north and the south of Korea (to) wage a struggle to frustrate the Yankees' moves to invade the DPRK."

U.S. Responds Diplomatically

Washington responded with its own warning to Pyongyang that its threat to end the moratorium on missile testing "would further isolate" it from the international community.

Officials in the South Korean capital said Roh would stress to Kelly Monday, January 13, the need to solve the issue peacefully through dialogue and for close consultation between Seoul and Washington.

Kelly's visit is the latest in a series of diplomatic missions that first brought French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin for talks Saturday.

Former Japanese premier Yoshiro Mori is expected in Seoul Monday.

High-level talks between the two Koreas expected later this month will also focus on the standoff.

North Korea's tactics are widely seen as a gambit by the virtually-bankrupt regime to win more concessions from the United States.

Roh's newly-appointed special envoy to the United States, Chyung Dae-Chul, called for the North to end its hardball tactics.

"North Korea should withdraw its decision to pull out of the NPT," he told local radio.

"I believe the North's brinkmanship is designed to secure the upper hand in negotiations with the United States."