TOKYO -- North Korea warned that U.S. charges of the existence of an underground nuclear facility in the Stalinist country were "as good as a declaration of war."
In a party newspaper report carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency late Friday night, Pyongyang denounced the charges of the suspected nuclear site and said: "While the U.S. imperialists and their followers are spreading the fiction of 'suspected underground nuclear facilities' in the North, is, in actuality, as good as a declaration of war against the DPRK (North Korea)."Pyongyang's retort came as North Korean and U.S. officials met in New York on Friday to discuss U.S. demands to visit an underground site in the Stalinist state that could be related to a nuclear program.
According to the official North Korean report monitored in Tokyo, the charges have brought "a touch and go situation to the Korean peninsula."
"If the U.S. imperialists provoke a war, the Korean people will give a thousandfold blow to the enemies at home and abroad and totally smash them," it said.
The talks between Washington and Pyongyang were expected to extend into next week, U.S. State Department officials said. They gave no details of the discussions except to say they concentrated on Washington's demand to inspect the underground construction site close to a mothballed Soviet-era nuclear reactor.
The meetings, being held amid bellicose statements from Pyongyang that accused Washington of pushing the situation to the "brink of war," were due to continue in New York on Saturday and in Washington on Monday and Tuesday.
At talks in Pyongyang earlier this month, the North Koreans asked the United States to promise financial compensation if an inspection of the site turns up no evidence of activity which violates a 1994 agreement. The United States rejected the demand.