North Korea said today it would react strongly to a nuclear arms review that US newspapers say includes contingency plans for using atomic weapons against seven countries including the communist North.
The official KCNA news agency said Washington would be grossly mistaken if it tried to attack North Korea with nuclear weapons.
"The DPRK will not remain a passive onlooker to the Bush administration's inclusion of the DPRK in the seven countries, targets of US nuclear attack, but take a strong countermeasure against it," it said.
DPRK is the acronym for the country's official title - the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
North Korea, which has a track record of rhetorical brinkmanship, did not spell out what form the countermeasure might take.
"If the US intends to mount a nuclear attack on any part of the DPRK just as it did on Hiroshima, it is grossly mistaken," KCNA said, referring to one of two Japanese cities hit by US atomic bombs at the end of World War Two.
A nuclear war to be imposed by the US nuclear fanatics upon the DPRK would mean their ruin in nuclear disaster.
The news agency, with trademark ambiguity, did not make clear whether it was implying North Korea had nuclear weapons to strike back or whether an attack on the North would cause untold damage to the South where 37,000 US troops are based.
Pyongyang's suspected nuclear weapons programme brought it to the brink of conflict with Washington in 1994, before a diplomatic deal was struck to freeze the programme in exchange for oil supplies and Western-built nuclear reactors.
The New York Timesand Los Angeles Timesreported last weekend the Pentagon had conducted a secret nuclear posture review that raised the possibility of developing new types of nuclear arms and described contingency plans for using them against Russia, China, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria and North Korea.
Senior US officials have sought to play down the reports about the policy review, saying it is simple prudent planning by Pentagon strategists.
Russia and China have expressed concern about the reports.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov met US President George W. Bush and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Washington yesterday to discuss nuclear arms and seek more details on the review.
North Korea said the reports indicated the Bush administration was working in real earnest to prepare a dangerous nuclear war to bring nuclear disasters to our planet and humankind.