N. Korea Warns U.S. Not to Attack

North Korea accused the United States on Wednesday of planning a nuclear attack and warned that it could retaliate.

North Korea “is fully ready to decisively control a preemptive nuclear attack with a strong retaliatory blow,” the communist nation’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper said in an Englishlanguage commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

The United States has repeatedly denied having any plans to attack North Korea.

At six-nation talks in Beijing, the Pyongyang regime Monday promised to give up its nuclear weapons program in return for economic aid and security assurances.

Since then, however, the North’s rhetoric has underscored its unpredictability and cast doubt on its commitment to the accord hammered out with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States after four rounds of contentious negotiations stretching over two years.

North Korea said Tuesday that it would not dismantle its atomic weapons program unless Washington first agreed to supply light-water nuclear reactors for generating electricity -- a condition the U.S. government had already rejected.

Despite the tough statements, none of the North’s negotiating partners said they expected a breakdown in the disarmament talks, which are scheduled to resume in November when the parties meet in the Chinese capital to discuss implementing the agreement.

In the joint statement from the talks in Beijing, the U.S. delegation “affirmed that it has no nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula and has no intention to attack or invade [North Korea] with nuclear or conventional weapons.”

The disarmament agreement sidestepped the reactor issue, with participants saying they would discuss it “at an appropriate time.”

Other parties to the talks said the reactor could be discussed only after Pyongyang fulfills the pledge made Monday to rejoin the global Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and accept inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.