N. Korea Warns Of 'Sea Of Fire'

North Korea denied Sunday ever admitting to U.S. officials that it had a secret nuclear weapons program and said it would unleash a "sea of fire" if the United States challenges the communist country.

The warning, issued over the North's state-run media and reported by South Korea's Yonhap news agency, came just hours before U.S. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly arrived in South Korea in a new push by Washington and its allies to find a diplomatic solution to the escalating crisis.

Kelly was scheduled to meet President-elect Roh Moo-hyun, who espouses diplomacy as the only solution to the crisis. Kelly also planned to meet Foreign Minister Choi Sung-hong and two presidential security advisers — Yim Sung-joon and Lim Dong-won. Kelly will travel Tuesday to China, as well as Singapore, Indonesia and Japan.

Despite its bellicose rhetoric, North Korean is ready to negotiate directly with the United States about its nuclear weapons programs, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Sunday.

Talk of a "holy war" against America and other menacing statements mask a desire to start a dialogue with the Bush administration, said Richardson, who on Saturday completed three days of talks in Santa Fe, N.M., with North Koreans diplomats.

The former U.N. ambassador, who reported on the meetings to Secretary of State Colin Powell, thinks talks could start soon.

"They don't negotiate like we do. They don't have our same mentality," Richardson said in a broadcast interview.

"They believe in order to get something they have to lay out additional cards, step up the rhetoric, be more belligerent."

In the past few days, North Korea has sent sharply mixed messages. Pyongyang withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and threatened on Saturday to resume long-range missile tests, vowing to "smash U.S. nuclear maniacs" in a "holy war." At the same time, its diplomats told an American governor in the United States their country had no intention of building nuclear bombs.

During a visit to Russia that ended Sunday, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi urged Pyongyang to rescind its withdrawal from the non-proliferation treaty, and said a peaceful solution is in the interests of all.

"That is what's best for North Korea, for the international community," he said. "And this is true for the United States as well."

A senior official traveling with Koizumi said Tokyo was still holding out hope North Korea would respect its promises not to test missiles. "We believe this moratorium on the firing of the missiles and their (North Korea's) commitment should continue to be observed," the Japanese official said on condition he not be further identified.

Sunday's denial hits at one of the flash points of the current standoff.

In October, the United States announced the North had admitted to having an atomic weapons program while Kelly was in Pyongyang for talks.

Such a program would be a violation of a 1994 accord with the United States, which pledged North Korea energy supplies if it froze operations at its nuclear facilities. Washington retaliated in December by halting oil shipments promised under the deal.

North Korea appeared to backtrack Sunday.

"The claim that we admitted developing nuclear weapons is an invention fabricated by the U.S. with sinister intentions," Yonhap quoted the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper as saying.

The newspaper blamed the United States for the current crisis and warned: "If the United States evades its responsibility and challenges us, we'll turn the citadel of imperialists into a sea of fire."

When negotiators were hammering out the 1994 accord — over similar concerns about North Korea's nuclear intentions — Pyongyang also warned that it would turn the South Korean capital of Seoul into a "sea of fire."

The United States believes North Korea has one or two nuclear weapons and could make several more within six months, if it reactivates a plutonium reprocessing plant. On Saturday, a North Korean official said that the plant north of Pyongyang was ready for operation.

South Korea vowed again Sunday to pursue a diplomatic solution, after National Security Adviser Yim Sung-joon returned from a visit to Washington and Tokyo.

"The government's consistent position is that it will do its best to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue peacefully through diplomacy," Yim told Yonhap.

North Korea's defiance had been building for weeks but intensified with Saturday, when a series of leaders issued anti-American diatribes at a rally of one million people in the nation's capital — one vowing the North would seek "revenge with blood" toward any country that violates its sovereignty.

The threat of new missile tests came from the North's ambassador to China, Choe Jin Su, who said tests could resume if U.S. relations don't improve.

New tests would be the first since 1998, when North Korea shot a missile over Japan into the Pacific. Pyongyang later set a moratorium on tests which was to last into 2004.

Another official left open the possibility of the North reprocessing spent fuel rods from its nuclear reactor to make atomic bombs. Son Mun San, in charge of Pyongyang's relations with the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, said in Vienna the reprocessing plant now stands in a state of "readiness."

On Saturday, another commentary carried by the official news agency KCNA warned: "If any forces attempt to encroach upon the sovereignty and dignity of the DPRK, it will mercilessly wipe out the aggressors and mete out stern punishment to them."

DPRK stands for Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the country's official name.

Since the nuclear standoff resumed, the North has removed seals placed on one of its nuclear facilities by IAEA monitors and expelled two U.N. inspectors.

With the country dropping out of the nonproliferation treaty effective Saturday, the world community has grounds to take the issue to the U.N. Security Council, which could impose economic and political sanctions on Pyongyang.

The North has said it would consider sanctions "a declaration of war."

In the South Korean capital of Seoul, about 30,000 people rallied Saturday in support of the U.S. military presence as a deterrent to an attack from the North.

But the tone in Pyongyang was vitriolic. Premier Hong Song Nam said North Korea was determined to "defend its right to exist from the U.S. imperialists who put an 'axis of evil' cap on us." Another official called for launching a "holy war" against the United States.