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The Associated Press
Saturday, December 8, 2001; 7:22 AM
SEOUL, South Korea –– North Korea accused the United States on Saturday of trying to start a war against the communist state, and said it will respond to war with war.
Saturday's statement came after President Bush issued a fresh warning last week to Iraq and North Korea that there would be consequences if they produce weapons of mass destruction. Bush demanded that the North allow U.N. experts to inspect its suspected nuclear weapons program.
The North's Stalinist regime regularly issues strident, hardline statements against the United States.
Bush's demand reflected an "attempt to provoke a new war of aggression against the (North)," Minju Joson, a state-run North Korean newspaper, said in a commentary.
"The Korean people and the People's Army do not want war but are not afraid of it," it said. "Now that the U.S. makes desperate efforts to unleash a war of aggression against the Democratic People's Republic of (North) Korea, it is fully ready to react to the war with a war of justice."
The commentary was carried by the North's official foreign news outlet, KCNA, which was monitored in Seoul.
North Korea has escalated its anti-U.S. rhetoric after Washington deployed more fighter jets to South Korea last month to fill in for a U.S. aircraft carrier that left the region to support the American military campaign in Afghanistan.
The North has also ignored Bush's offer in June to open dialogue aimed at curbing North Korea's missile and nuclear programs and its massive deployment of troops near the border with South Korea.
The Korean peninsula was divided into the communist North and pro-Western South in 1945. The 1950-53 Korean War ended without a peace treaty, and the two sides are still technically at war.
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