N KOREA: North Korea has implied strongly that it has deployed nuclear weapons and accused Washington of using the North's comments on atomic bombs at talks last week as a "mean trick".
The North's official KCNA news agency said yesterday that last week's three days of talks with the US in Beijing were fruitless but not an utter failure.
Using a standard North Korean tactic of apportioning blame early, it said the future was up to Washington.
"The reality requires the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to deter the escalating US moves to stifle the DPRK with physical force, compels it to opt for possessing a necessary deterrent force and put it into practice," the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a television statement.
"Frankly, any statement that implies, as this one does, possession of nuclear weapons is a very serious matter," said one Western diplomat.
But South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun urged people not to overreact to what the North Koreans had told Washington. "North Korea's admission is a card they have put down on the table with an element of game tactics in North Korea-US negotiations," Mr Roh said in Seoul.
By equating nuclear programmes and talking about putting its deterrent into practice, the North implied it had nuclear weapons and had possibly deployed them, analysts said. "It is deliberately ambiguous and it is designed to cause concern which might bring the Americans closer to the negotiating table," said the diplomat.